A Woman of Angkor

by John Burgess

Bopa obeyed, as she always did. They climbed a set of rickety steps, Rom in the lead; the three men remained below. Inside, things were rather shabby too. The walls showed water stains; the matting was unswept and worn through in places. But Rom gave no sign of noticing. She sank to the floor, seeming suddenly tired. After a while, she spoke, in an intimate voice: ‘I have to confess that I’m nervous about going to the palace. His Majesty will be focusing on organizing this war. You know how impatient he gets when there’s something like that going on.’ She lingered over that for a while. Then she began to weep. ‘Oh, Bopa! I’ve got to tell you the truth! He may be very upset with me. Wicked people are saying that I told my son to do the awful thing he did!’

  My girl was touched by her friend’s distress. She took her hand. ‘No one will believe it.’

  ‘Yes, but it still troubles me. If only His Majesty knew what really happened. When Darit was about to leave for his banishment, I stayed up the whole night with him. I told him over and over that he had to accept the penalty. He had killed a man – it was only right that he be punished. But he wouldn’t accept. He went off with his heart stirred up and now he’s leading this terrible rebellion. His Majesty, his own father, was almost killed. And it’s due to me! I’m Darit’s mother and I failed to teach him Heaven’s basic rule of respecting his father.’

  Bopa put arms around the Elder Sister.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Rom, relaxing. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. When I heard you were at your brother’s place, I knew that if I could just see you, then somehow things would be set right. Please forgive me – it was selfish of me to go fetch you that way. I’m sure you would have been more comfortable at your brother’s house.’

  She was quiet for a while, but then something roused her. ‘I know, I know what we’ll do! You’ll go to him ahead of me and explain! You know, smooth the way. It’s perfect. His Majesty trusts you, he listens to you. We’ve all been able to see that, always.’

  Bopa felt flattered, but she confessed she was afraid at the thought of going alone with such an assignment.

  ‘Come on, you can do it!’ Rom replied, taking her arm. ‘We’ll work out what to say. You can tell the King you heard me arguing with Darit.’

  ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘Never mind. I can tell you exactly what we said. You wouldn’t be lying. You’d just be telling him what happened. You’ve got to do it! I’ve done many things for you over the years, haven’t I? I’ve even kept secrets for you, one’s there could have been real trouble over. Think what would have happened if word had got out about you and the crown prince’s riding instructor!’

  Bopa laughed with her, though uncertain why the Elder Sister had said this, and whether it was in fact funny.

  ‘And there’s one other thing you must do, Bopa. You must speak up for your mother. She’s in terrible trouble, you know.’

  Bopa winced. She had forgotten again.

  ‘Now, you mustn’t argue that she didn’t help my son. The King will never believe that, he’s had suspicions for years that she was in touch with his enemies. We’ve all admired her holiness, her philanthropy, but His Majesty has always wondered if it was all meant to disguise something. Really, the only thing that will work with him is to admit her guilt. He’ll like it if you confirm what he already believes. You can say you saw it with your own eyes. You know, put your face to the dust and beg him to forgive her. He will, I’m sure. It’s in his heart to forgive when people admit transgressions.’

  Bopa was afraid, but she did manage to get some rest that night, calmed by sleeping powder that Rom provided.

  The next morning, Elder Sister helped her put on perfume, jewellery, headdress and a fresh green silk garment that had all somehow been summoned up at the bleak little house. She set off in the cart. There was no trouble with the sentries at the palace compound’s north entry; concubines had rights to pass. She reached the main courtyard, but when she tried to continue to the audience hall, guards stopped her. So she did what Rom had directed in this event. She settled down onto a patch of grass. Sooner or later, His Majesty would come this way, Rom had said. You may have to wait him out.

  An hour passed, then two. Soldiers, priests, couriers came and went, distracted, giving her odd glances. Bopa’s eyes began to droop. But then came tense voices and the clattering of weapons loose in their sheaths. The King appeared.

  Her face went down. ‘Majesty!’ she called into the grass. ‘I deserve to address not even the dust beneath your feet!’

  She dared peek upward. The King had stopped and was glaring at her, a hand on his hip. ‘Another member of this family? Have you burned up something too? No, you don’t have it in you for something like that.’

  Bopa had no idea what he meant, but she proceeded with the words Rom had given her. ‘Majesty! I beseech humbly that you not believe falsehoods that may have reached your ears. With the gods listening, I state...I state that the chief concubine has at all times been loyal to you in...’

  ‘That’s who you’re here about?’

  From her spot on the ground, she managed to keep going. ‘Rom did not know what he planned, Majesty! She did not know! She went away the day before the rebellion began because she received a note that her father was gravely ill. I was there when it came. She went back to her village to be with her mother. She had no time to tell the palace she was leaving – that is how distraught she was. And through the prayers of Rom and many priests and everyone in the home village, Majesty, her father recovered and all made merit for the next life. But now Rom worries that her absence will cause misunderstanding....’

  ‘Don’t lie – she knew and maybe you did too!’

  Here Bopa’s resolve failed. The other points on which Rom had drilled her vanished from her memory. So she reached into her waist for the thing she’d been given as the final piece of evidence.

  ‘Here, Majesty! I offer the magic amulet of the rebel Darit!’ Keeping her face in the grass, she held it up.

  ‘How did you get this?’ He snatched it away.

  ‘From the loyal Rom, Majesty. She took it from her son before he left Angkor for exile. Please, Majesty, please believe! The rebel was without it during the fighting at Chaiyapoom. Its absence enabled your force of soldiers to stand up to one so much larger.’

  The King was studying it, squinting, holding it to the light. Bopa’s memory returned. ‘It was made by the gods in the time of the birth of the Khmer race. It was found inside a golden image at a temple by the Freshwater Sea five reigns ago and then it was blessed by a corps of one thousand priests and seers. Before Darit went into exile, I heard his mother arguing with him. “You must learn to respect His Majesty’s law.” She said it over and over. “You must show your loyalty to your King every day. You must accept your punishment.” But he refused. So she waited until he went to sleep and she took the amulet from his neck and hid it. Now she presents it to you. She presents it to you as a testament of her loyalty and a guarantee of victory in the coming war.’

  There was a long silence. Then: ‘You swear this is the amulet?’

  ‘I do, Majesty.’

  ‘But it looks cheap, like something sold outside a temple at a night festival.’

  Rom had prepared her for this. ‘That is among its powers, Majesty. To protect itself, to avert covetousness, it takes on a very ordinary appearance.’

  The King placed it around his neck, then glanced left and right, as if testing whether the world looked different with the charm’s help.

  He looked back down to her. ‘So you have nothing to say for your mother? What kind of daughter are you, speaking up for the concubine but not for the woman who brought you into this life?’

  Bopa opened her mouth to say what Rom had told her.

  But…but those words wouldn’t come. My dear girl could only stare dumbly at the King’s feet, eyes blinking. And do you know, right there, with the King’s anger so strong she could feel it like the heat from a fire, she found that in her mind had been
placed a new realization. It was that lies could be told for Rom’s sake, but not for mine. It was her duty now to speak from the heart and to place faith in Heaven’s teaching that from truth justice will always flow.

  ‘Majesty,’ she said calmly, daring even to look up at him, ‘anyone who knows my mother knows that to associate her with war and violence is impossible. Please accept this, which can only be true, regardless of what was heard on the battlefield in Chaiyapoom. Please let my mother go free.’

  Then Bopa said something more: ‘Majesty, if I am mistaken about this, I will give up my place in the palace and pass the rest of my life in a holy order.’

  She put her head down again, amazed at her words. She waited, and waited more, growing anxious. From above her came a sigh of frustration. Then she heard the sound of feet on gravel, moving quickly away.

  60: Heaven’s eternal will

  How could I deserve the sacrifices, the risks that were being taken for me that day? By so many people – son, husband, daughter. And, just a few minutes after my daughter’s entreaties, by the Brahmin.

  It occurred at the pavilion that was the King’s military headquarters. There three generals, strong men with scars and war tattoos, were crouching before His Majesty, who sat on a dais. The King gulped from a bowl of water, then without any preliminaries at all began to lay out his plan. An increased tax of silver, men and elephants to be levied on every estate. Three new armies that would train outside the Capital until the rains ended. One to march to the Siamese border to hold off any attacks of opportunity there, another to go east to do the same with the Chams. The third, the main force, to move north and hunt down the rebel Darit. And then specific instructions on Darit’s fate: His head would be brought back to the Capital, the rest of his body would be cut up and scattered in the forest as food for birds and animals. Special curses, written for him alone, would be applied. Darit’s soul would roam the world in eternity, powerless, tormented, unable to achieve rebirth. The extremes of love the King had once felt for Darit were now extremes of hate.

  With the plan laid out, the King paused for a moment to touch the amulet that hung around his neck. I think it made him feel a special confidence now, one that had stolen up on him, rather than appearing the instant that he placed the thing on his body.

  He looked to the commanders, demanding comment on his plan. It of course generated praise from each one in turn, though likely each was thinking of something else, which of the three armies would be his.

  It was then that the Brahmin arrived, uninvited.

  ‘What is it?’ The King was not open to an interruption.

  ‘I have come, Majesty, to announce to you the Council of Brahmins’ decision on how to honour King and commanders as they go off to war.’

  ‘You can tell me later. When I’ve dismissed these men.’

  ‘But Majesty, these honours will be made in ways not seen before in the history of the Empire.’

  ‘I said later.’

  ‘Majesty, I beg for your time now.’

  The King put up hands in exasperation. ‘Explain then.’

  ‘The idea came upon me as I made sacrifices to Vishnu, Majesty, so it is my belief that the supreme consciousness of Vishnu is its origin. Two of my assistants will go back to the temple and will question the priests there to determine precisely the background of...’

  ‘Brahmin, tell us the idea.’

  ‘Of course, Majesty. It is this: When kings of future ages visit your mountain-temple, they will see not only images of Vishnu and his divine retinue, and scenes from the sacred texts, among them the Churning of the Sea of Milk and the battle between the Kaurava and Pandava clans. They will see images of, of – it is, ah, so extraordinary an idea, it could only come from a god. They will see – images of Your Majesty in his earthly form.’

  The King’s frown softened and the Brahmin felt emboldened to go on. ‘It is an unorthodox concept, I concede. Until now, bas reliefs have depicted only beings from the Heavenly realm. The apsaras that are being carved are following that tradition – they are modelled on real women, of course, but in stone they take divine form. Heaven wishes now to progress art to a new level of perfection. Heaven signals that the images of the temple must reflect earthly as well as Heavenly reality. His Majesty does Heaven’s work on this earth and so he must be shown doing that work, not in Heaven but here in the realm where we live. He must be shown as the font of justice and benevolent rule that he is, presiding at court on his dais, his parasols overhead. All this must be clearly depicted so that future kings, perhaps lacking the present one’s wisdom, can see and learn from it.

  ‘Now, just as a god in Heaven has loyal assistants, so does a King on earth. And just as we depict those Heavenly assistants on our temples, so we must depict the assistants on earth.’ He turned toward the generals. ‘Though in a smaller scale, of course.’

  Their faces begged him to continue.

  ‘I foresee a great scene of His Majesty at his most glorious as a warrior and to the side his senior commanders, some on elephants, some on horses, leading ranks of soldiers to war. Our best sculptors will create these images and they will last for eternity. Future commanders heading to the field of battle will first come to the mountain-temple to gaze upon these images and they will know that today’s commanders are the men they must emulate.’

  You will understand now why the Brahmin had risked the King’s anger to insist on laying out the council’s conclusions now. (Though I should say that at this point the council’s other members knew nothing of any conclusions.) Subhadra wanted the military men to hear, and to begin thinking of their own immortality in stone.

  Clearly they were doing that – a silence took hold. And then one of the commanders spoke up with a question, as if on cue from the priest. ‘But construction of the temple has stopped. When will it resume?’

  The King frowned, and the general chose to drop the subject. The talk returned to army preparations, but the Brahmin did not leave. He sat to the side until the generals were dismissed, then he kept on with a plan he had thought carefully through.

  ‘The suspension of construction is a minor thing, Majesty.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Suddenly the King pounded a fist on the dais; the priest felt it might explode into kindling. ‘Twenty thousand people have put down their tools.’

  ‘It is minor, Majesty, because it is so easily resolved. Your mercy in sparing the life of the Architect is commendable. You have sent him home, and through that action much merit will accrue for your next life. Heaven has the power to restore the inspiration to the Architect’s mind. All that remains is...to free the Lady Sray.’

  ‘I won’t! She conspired against me, against the Empire.’

  ‘Majesty, we have seen no evidence of that. We have only the self-serving words of a man who is leading a rebellion against you, who has lied many times before.’

  ‘You say that, but what about those magistrates I sent to the parasol village? She is the patron of the village and yet even with that people can’t deny to my officials that they saw her bless the traitor Darit. He knelt before her and she blessed him!’

  ‘Were these people close enough to hear what was said, Majesty?’

  ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘The Lady is often asked to bless people, Majesty. They believe she can cure all sorts of illnesses. Perhaps Darit claimed to be sick.’

  ‘I don’t know – perhaps I’ll go and ask her myself.’

  He said that but he made no effort to go. Rather, he stepped to the edge of the pavilion and stood staring at the shrubs and gravel paths outside it, as if there might be some solution to this problem there.

  Presently Subhadra spoke again. ‘Majesty, may I suggest, may I suggest in the most humble, respectful terms that we must not allow any other considerations to be at work here. In the almost thirty years I have served you as Rajaguru, we have dealt with that of which I speak many times. The answer can never change – it is Heaven�
�s eternal will. To each person on earth, whether King or slave, something is denied.’

  ‘Why are so many people willing to risk their lives on behalf of this woman? Why do they side with her when I have made it clear what I want?’

  Many men would have withdrawn at this point. But Subhadra did not.

  ‘Majesty, I will always hope that in your court there will be no risk in speaking the truth.’ And then he said words that I did not deserve. ‘For me the reason I speak as I do is that I believe she is a soul that was born into this life on earth for reasons we cannot comprehend, that she belongs in Heaven, but that while she lives among us here, we must respect her presence, her life apart from us, and we must do what we can to help her in this life peacefully.’

  The King said nothing to that.

  ‘Majesty, I know there is great temptation that you have resisted so far. This woman is confined in a room just a few steps from here, and yet you have not gone to her. I commend you for that. But while you consider your final decision about her, let us at least move her to some other place, further away, where...’

  The King spun around. ‘Absolutely not! She will stay where she is, and I will go to her at any moment I choose. And you priests won’t have any say about whatever I choose to do with her there.’

  ‘Majesty, you must not…’

  ‘I’ve had enough of you. You will leave now.’

  The Brahmin did leave. He took a few unsteady steps away from the pavilion’s door, then turned to assure himself that the King at least was not going to me right then. No, it seemed I was safe for a while longer: The King had resumed his stance at the edge of the pavilion, his mind searching for answers that refused to reveal themselves.

  61: Abode of the gods

  In the afternoons, I sat on my mat, reading texts for as long as my eyes would allow, or gazing westward down the great entrance causeway. In early evenings, as the sun made its departure, I ate the last rice of the day. Pristine darkness settled in, and I looked at the stars, or the moon, or the undersides of passing clouds, whatever Heaven chose to display that night.