A Woman of Angkor

by John Burgess

  Then our feet took us to the central market. We bought rice and fish and fruit and coconuts, as much as we could carry, but sat down to eat right there. I looked to my daughter, who was sipping from her second coconut, and I felt overcome with affection. I reflected what a gift from Heaven was this girl. The danger had passed, but I found myself wondering again if we should run away from this new life, which had come close to killing us. So I decided we would ask Kumari.

  But when we went looking for the elephant, she wasn’t in any of her usual places around the market. I asked the man who from a mat at the market gate collected rents from the vendors.

  ‘You didn’t hear, Mrs Sray? She has entered the royal stables, by the King’s order.’

  I did know that in the period when Kumari still had a broad following, His Majesty was passing in procession one day and stopped to watch as she told fortunes. Now I learned that while we were imprisoned in the compound, our King had formally declared that she was in fact possessed of special powers, regardless of her decline in public regard, and had brought her into the palace.

  So – another shock, another friend lost. But then I found myself with a comforting thought. In the King’s stables, the elephant would be given leaves and stalks in abundance, and balms for any problems with her hide. And His Majesty, I knew, would never attempt to abuse her powers. He would put to her only questions that Heaven intended she answer. Perhaps some small aspect of this event was a signal, dare I think it, from the elephant to me. I have entered service of royalty, Kumari was saying; so have you. Life behind the royal walls will seem strange, but in time we will both make good of it. Don’t you recall the fortune I selected for you that day by the shrine?

  I had one more question for the rent collector. ‘And Sadong, the elephant’s keeper. Where is he?’

  ‘In the palace too. He is to continue in his role.’

  That seemed like another sign. So I embraced my daughter, who didn’t quite understand why, and together we walked back toward the prince’s compound, slowly because we were carrying that big load of food.

  When we reached our house, we saw that three small banana leaf bundles had been left on the steps. Bopa always liked a surprise, so she ran forward and opened one. It contained sweet meats. She smiled, bringing a sample to her lips. I picked up the other two bundles. I was feeling a bit embarrassed. Why should there be gifts?

  Then I turned and saw in the window of the neighbouring house a woman, who put hands together to greet me.

  11: The novice parasol bearers

  So after that, Bopa and I were safe. We had plenty to eat. And we were no longer shunned. But we did not become normal members of the prince’s household, far from it. Women invited us to walk with them to the canal for clothes washing, but there they tried to take our dirty garments from us and scrub them themselves, saying, please, let us help, you take a rest. Others came to the house to inquire after us, but they also brought more gifts of food – catfish, rice cakes, water spinach, sugar cane. I had no idea how to respond. I wanted only to be no different than they.

  Each morning I awoke and wondered if this would be the day when my husband would return and show me the way to live in this strange place. And my boy – he would come too. This new life would not be so bad if I could see my boy.

  But each evening, the lamp extinguished, my daughter and I lay down to sleep having seen neither of them.

  It was not that we had no news. It was that it was always unreliable, never the same day to day. We might hear one morning that our prince had become established at the Chaiyapoom Estate. But an hour later, it would be said that he was on the march to some other estate. My husband and son were at his side. No, don’t believe that – they were not, they had remained behind at Chaiyapoom.

  Then late one morning, as I sat on my haunches in the rear of the house, cleaning ash from the brazier, Bopa called to say there was a young man in front asking for me.

  I went to the door. My goodness, how respectful this young man was – like the compound women, in fact. He was kneeling at the foot of the steps, hands together, looking to the ground, as if I were some kind of royalty.

  I descended, rather too quickly, and stood facing him.

  He spoke up, in a rather timid voice. ‘I bring a message to Mrs Sray, wife of Nol the parasol master. The message is from Nol the parasol master.’

  I think I began to tremble. ‘Well, please, go ahead and tell me it.’

  He closed his eyes to recite. ‘Dear wife, your son and your husband are in good health. We are at the prince’s side daily. We hope to see you soon.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  That brought a grimace – he took it as his own fault. ‘I am sorry, wife of the parasol master. There is no more.’

  I had prayed so hard for any real news at all, but now I felt disappointed, even cheated, that what came was so little.

  ‘Well, then, young man. Come inside and drink some water.’

  ‘You are very kind.’ He stood up and now I noticed that behind him lay a bundle wrapped in cotton fabric, a long one. Of course! A closed parasol. He picked it up, and brought it up with him into the house. It was an awkward fit inside – he was afraid he would bump something with it. He apologized more than once, but you can imagine that he had the strictest orders never to let it out of his sight. He laid it down along a wall.

  I poured him a bowl of water from our stoneware jar.

  ‘And what is your name then, please, young man?’

  ‘Ma’am, I am Veng.’

  ‘And who are you, Veng?’ He had the weathered skin of a boy raised in the sun that shines hard on rice fields. His skin would change, surely, in his new calling.

  ‘I am a parasol bearer, ma’am. A member of your husband’s team.’

  He made a smile of the most genuine pride, and I was warmed as well. Perhaps my husband’s new occupation was for the good, bringing such feelings to a farm boy.

  He finished his water quickly, not wishing to inconvenience me, and made to leave. But I gave him more water, then spoke to him softly, doing my best to put him at ease, and presently he began to tell me a little bit, glancing from time to time at his bundle, even inside here, to assure it was safe. This Veng was quite a sharp young man, it turned out. Within an hour, I had the first reliable picture of what had happened to my husband and son in the many weeks they had been gone.

  Veng had grown up in Kralann village. Do you remember? That was the one that had made the parasols. One day a runner arrived from the city with a piece of slate, the one my husband sent shortly after the Brahmin called at our house. The slate was placed in the hand of the headman, and of course everyone crowded around to hear the headman read it aloud – it wasn’t every day that a runner came to this place. The message announced a return to service and it placed an order for four parasols. People were variously elated, or dumbfounded, or disbelieving. After all these years? Are we too being recalled? Could it be some joke that a city person is playing on us country folk? The headman examined the writing and the choice of words. On the spot he announced he believed it was in fact the hand of Nol, son of Heng the late parasol master of the Chaiyapoom Estate. There was no questioning after that. Everyone got to work.

  Three days later, my husband and son arrived, on foot, walking along a paddy dike.

  The entire population of the village, fifty or sixty people, turned out in welcome. All were on their knees, with the grey-haired headman in front.

  ‘Mr Nol, sir, it’s really you! You’ve come back to us, as you said you would!’

  I tell you, this Veng’s face lit up all over again recalling this moment. His new life had begun with my husband’s arrival.

  The headman explained to Nol at some length that the village had never forgotten the skills of fashioning the blessed implements. The skills had been kept in reserve for such a revival. Parasols for a prince! A prince of the Third Rank!

  The headman led the way for an inspection, amid a general sc
urrying about of adults and children. Nol and my boy were taken to a pile of thick green bamboo, newly cut and neatly stacked. I would come to know this process quite well, and I can picture how it was presented that day.

  The basic framing material, located by the village’s own men in the forests, was taken only from groves that get just the right amount of water and light, where the soil is friendly. It was not bought from merchants. Step one in the fabrication process: a man taking up a saw and with quick, strong strokes cutting a section lengthwise, a bit longer than an arm, then standing it upright. Then out comes a heavy iron knife. Its blade is placed on the fresh cross-section, then forced quickly downward. The bamboo splits smartly along the grain – this is the most pleasing thing to watch. This the man does over and over, creating strips. These are taken to the next artisan, who sits on a low wooden platform. She is a women – this next step is too delicate for a man. She has a knife too, but a smaller one whose long handle she braces between elbow and torso. Its blade dances about, guided by some friendly spirit or else it would cut her. It creates smaller, more delicate strips, each notched in just such a way, with identical curving contours. The pieces are taken and assembled by other workers into a parasol frame. Ribs radiate from a hub, everything held together by white string that runs a complex course through tiny holes and notches.

  My husband and son were also shown a woman who painted tiny lotus blossoms on stretched silk, a man who applied silver paint to handles. Each parasol would come with three of these handles – short for use when the prince was walking, mid-length for when he rode a horse or palanquin, long for when he sat atop an elephant. Finally, the visitors inspected a pair of women who sewed the silver-trimmed sampots that bearers would wear when on duty.

  My husband told the headman: ‘Very good job! No one here has lost the skills. Our prince will be pleased.’

  He went on to say that the prince’s household would also need four palm-leaf fans with silver shafts and four fly whisks, for keeping winged insects clear of the royal form. These were to be delivered to the Capital in two weeks’ time. It would be good if the artisans also began working on spares for these.

  The headman of course wanted some news of this prince, and everyone around him did too. ‘Your message said he was going to Chaiyapoom, sir. Has he now returned to the Capital?’

  Nol answered that for now he was at the estate. ‘But it is not important where the prince is,’ he said grandly. ‘What matters is that, wherever he comes and goes, he continues to rise in the esteem of King and Heaven.’

  The foreman glanced toward the gathering visitors, as if to say, hear this wisdom, let it improve you. Veng would not have dreamed of telling me, but I can guess that the headman was also saying, pay no attention to the fact that our patron has only one ear. How he must have wanted to ask how that came to pass.

  Veng would have talked on and on about my husband, but I steered him to tell me something about my boy. Oh yes! he said. Our master Nol put a hand to his son’s shoulder when the two of them arrived. ‘This is my son, Sovan. He will train as a parasol master, like his father, and one day will take his place.’ The villagers all turned Sovan’s way and raised hands in greeting, some of them going back to their knees. I can imagine that my boy looked to the ground, uneasy. He was always that way, preferring to watch, rather than be watched.

  That night, the visitors lay down to sleep in the headman’s house; outside, people were still hurrying about, attending in lamplight to final preparations. By morning, the parasols were closed up and wrapped for transport. The headman brought four young men he had chosen to be bearers – Veng was one of them, of course.

  Mothers packed clothing and food into kramas for the journey. At their request, the four formal sampots were brought out of their coverings and displayed, to general delight. Then good-byes were said and the four young men fell into line. I am sure they felt a bit apprehensive about what life would be under the stern little man who was now their master. Final prayers were said, and the headman stepped to Nol with last-minute directions on how to cross the paddy land and reach the north trunk road by nightfall. Nol made a show of listening, but he wouldn’t have needed need the directions. He knew these paths from childhood.

  They walked all day. Late in the afternoon, monsoon showers wet them down, but the oiled coverings protected the parasols. Nol checked them several times. Toward dusk the skies cleared and the village men, tiring from the pace and the weight of their burden, were hoping for a break. They whispered to Sovan. No doubt they had begun to see him as their interlocutor, and he tried gently to persuade his father. But Nol wouldn’t listen – they would keep up until they came to the north trunk road.

  Finally, under the light of a gibbous moon, they reached it. There was no village here, just more rice paddies. But in one of the fields they could make out an old thatched shelter in which farmers slept at harvest time. Nol gave instructions that they would bed down there for the night. On its floor of split bamboo, the bearers-to-be ate rice their mothers had sent with them, then lay down gratefully, ready to sleep amidst the warmth of their friends’ bodies, trying to ignore the mosquitoes that quickly found them. But Nol wasn’t done – those poor boys, they hadn’t yet learned what kind of man they were now serving.

  He made his new charges sit up and watch lesson number one: Their master walking up and down outside the shelter, in the light of the moon, holding a length of cast-off bamboo as the staff of a parasol.

  ‘The goal is that the parasol seems to float on its own. Do you see what I mean? It has life and grace in itself. You the bearer just happen to be walking beneath it.’

  Veng saw that, even in the dark and with imaginary parasol, things really did look that way. It was as if the bamboo staff would have continued on its own had my husband let go.

  ‘Soon,’ said Nol, ‘you’ll all be able to do this. Or you’ll be sent back to the village. There will be no appeal.’

  They got back on the move at dawn. Nol bought morning rice for the group in the first village they reached, and stood over them, watching them eat, before he took some himself. When it was time to leave, he commandeered a passing oxcart, citing the needs of the prince’s business.

  He rode, so as to devote all his energy and concentration to lesson number two, which he delivered sitting on the back, legs dangling, facing the trainees following just behind on foot.

  ‘The bearer must always know instinctively where the sun is in relation to the royal personage. The bearer must anticipate turns that the procession will make and position himself accordingly, so that the sun’s rays never strike the royal skin. This helps assure that the royal personage’s skin remains pale and beautiful, like a god’s, as Heaven intended the skin of its earthly representatives to be, not baked brown like a farmer’s. It is of course not possible to completely shield that skin in every conceivable motion and eventuality, but that is the ideal and it can be achieved in all but the most exceptional circumstances.

  ‘When operating a palm fan that is mounted on a pole, the bearer must be aware of the state of the air. When it is still, strong, firm strokes of the fan are warranted, to give maximum cooling effect to the personage. When the air is moving, the fan plays a complementary role, not fighting the air’s flow but filling in, bringing coolness to the side of the royal body that the flow neglects.

  ‘In all of this, there is one sin that can never be committed. At no time can the implements come into contact with the royal personage’s body. Leg, arm, chest, hand – any part of that body. And, Heaven save you, not the head. Can you imagine what would be the penalty should a fan or a parasol touch this holiest of things? You would not dare touch the head of a beggar by the roadside; imagine what would happen were you to touch the head of a prince!’

  The party spent the night at a country shrine that took in travellers. The next morning, with his men bathed and ready to go, Nol announced that today the training would be different. The men would move as a mock proc
ession. He formed them up two-by-two and told each to hold his folded parasol up, as if it were open – it could not, of course, be opened, given the absence of a royal personage. He played the role of a prince, walking in the middle, and on his cue they advanced as a group. With a strip of bamboo, he smacked the shoulders of any man who fell out of step or let his staff waver.

  ‘The bearer is constantly at close quarters with the royal personage and sometimes overhears private words. Under no circumstance can the bearer appear to comprehend – indeed, in your case, that will generally not be a problem, because among themselves Their Highnesses often speak a language that village men cannot understand, the language of the palace and Heaven. But it is possible that as time passes you will come to know certain words and phrases. You must give no sign of this. And anything learned in this way must be treated in the strictest confidence, never repeated to anyone. Anyone. It is the moral thing to do, of course, and also the safe thing. The penalty for revealing the private words of your royal masters can be – well, the same as it can be for touching the head.’

  On until evening, it was like this – Nol dispensing knowledge, the four young men listening closely, fearful they’d miss something and displease the master. I am sure that Sovan struggled too.

  After five days, the team arrived at a small crossroads settlement, a collection of huts and market stalls, the last before Chaiyapoom. Nol sat the four men and my boy down in an eating stall and ordered rice soup all around. Then he walked knowingly to the old woman who was stooping by the fire.

  She looked up. Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘My goodness, it’s the little parasol bearer!’ It was like she’d seen a ghost. ‘And now a man! We all thought your soul had passed long ago...’

  Nol beamed. ‘It hasn’t yet, as you can see. I’ve come back. And I’m a full parasol master now. For Prince Indra. Perhaps you’ve heard the name.’