The King's Last Song

by Geoff Ryman

  Something bristled around Map's heart. “Mom and Dad too?"

  Mliss gave a tinkling little laugh. “Of course. Now don't tell me you forgot?” She was smiling.

  Map was plunged into nightmare. He felt as if he were falling down into a well. His parents, dead?

  "You were staying with Uncle, with the maquis. He told you himself. He said you went all quiet and hid in a haystack. He's dead now too, of course.” Her voice was light and pleasant, with the slightest rasp to it as if she had been shouting for a long time.

  Something stirred inside Map's head. It was a brown background, reeds perhaps, and in front of that, something black, out of focus. A dim memory of Uncle?

  Veasna was leaning forward in concern. “Chubby?"

  Oh, how stupid. Of course. He'd been told. My uncle told me, he said: both your parents are dead, and then I went and hid in the haystack, and I didn't tell Older Brother when I saw him next and then....I forgot all about it.

  It was as if all the leaves on the trees had fallen off at once. Their trunks and branches were clear now, bare and skeletal like burned hands.

  He'd left the Khmers Rouges because it would be easier to try to find his parents. He'd ridden up and down the country trying to find them. Years he had spent looking. And that little kid had known all along. That little twelve-year-old hiding inside him had never said, Hey, older-self, they're dead.

  Veasna was kneeling in front of him. “Samlaing? Map?"

  His sister was saying, pleasantly, “More tea?"

  "How?” Map was blinking; his face was twisted up as if trying to work out a very complicated problem. “How did they die?"

  "Maybe you don't remember because you blame yourself. The Lon Nol army knew that you and Heng had joined the maquis. So they came and beat Mom and Dad up. In those days troops didn't usually do that kind of thing. They were very bad at it. Right away, they died, just a few blows.” Mliss finished pouring another cup of tea. “I saw the whole thing."

  She sat smiling.

  "I sat and held them until neighbours came a day or two later. They were very kind and I lived with them. They said I was their daughter and I used their name to hide. How strange. How strange to forget a thing like that.” Her round eyes stared at him in mild wonder.

  Everything seemed to rush to the front of Map's face: blood, tears, sweat. Everything seemed to swell. He thought of himself at fourteen, a Khmer Rouge soldier guarding the New People, curled up on a floor and staring, because if he closed his eyes he dreamed about his parents and that would make him cry.

  Map thought of himself at twenty-five, guarding the Vietnamese labour camp in Kralanh. The Viets had herded six hundred men deep into the hill forests, set them digging trenches and laying mines. More conscripts kept arriving. No food could be delivered, and the forest had been foraged clean. Map had malaria, a new strain that had come out of Preah Vihear. It flattened him, left him prostrate and shivering and helpless. One of the conscripts screamed in his face, “How is this any better than Pol Pot!” They stole Map's hammock; he had to wrestle to keep his gun.

  Map had lain on the dirt, his bones quaking with fever. He had prayed then to the spirits of his parents to help him. Which meant he must have known in his heart that they were dead. There was a silence in the world whenever he thought about them.

  Veasna let his plate drop down to the floor. “Col Ch'nam T'Mei,” he whispered. Happy New Year.

  Festivities over.

  Veasna and Map spent the night on the floor of the train station. In the morning, they all went to Mliss's school.

  With the children, she was a different person.

  She picked a little girl up and swung her round and round. The other children clustered around her and she bowed down and kissed them. Immediately she joined their game of volleyball. She shouted encouragement, and laughed when they made mistakes, and got them laughing at their own mistakes as well.

  The German headmistress energetically rang a bell, and the older children ran into the classrooms. Mliss gathered the smaller children, sat them outside on the ground, and told them the story of the King and the White Elephant. Then she led them in song. She introduced her brother, and his friend. They were from the wars, far away. She made Map describe Angkor Wat. Map was too ashamed to say he had not bothered to visit, so he made it up, from the photographs he had seen. She took over and told them the famous story of how Jayavarman had driven out the Chams and rebuilt the city.

  "So. That is what we are doing. We are finishing the war, and will have to rebuild Cambodia again."

  Veasna stepped into the spotlight and started to sing old children's songs to them. Map had not known that Veasna could sing. The children were delighted. Mliss grinned and jumped up and took his hand and started to sing too. And then she asked all the children to join hands and sing.

  Map remembered being eleven years old, in school, the bad boy. He fired slingshots at people taking a shit in the woods. He and his brother were in a gang and they had gang wars, firing real arrows at each other. Once he hit an old grandpa by mistake. Map had hidden on the roof in the dusk as the old man searched the village, yelling.

  Yet. Map had been good at his letters and at maths. He loved saprak takraw, kicking the ball. He had bounced like a ball himself. He suddenly remembered the smell of his mother's fire, how she always sprinkled medicinal plants in it, to drive away illness and mosquitoes. He had a sudden sense of home.

  Maybe Veasna did too. Veasna asked the children if they knew about Ros Sereysothea and Sin Sisimuth. Most of them did not. Just a few years before it would have been risky even talking about them. The Vietnamese had banned all old music. But nowadays So Savoeun came all the way from Paris to give a concert in Boeung Kek Park. Veasna began to sing their sad songs from the old days before the wars. A tall handsome man in sunglasses with a nice smile who could sing—the children looked up in fascination.

  Is this Sin Sisimuth? No, he's dead.

  Sing us another, sing us another!

  Lunch came, rice with potatoes, saving Map and Veasna from having to think of more ways to entertain the children.

  Mliss loved feeding the children. She pushed food onto their plates, and gave them seconds. She encouraged them, by pretending to nibble the rice herself. She wore a white shirt and sunlight blazed through it and almost through her, as if she were translucent.

  She laid the children out on blankets in the shade, and she stroked their heads.

  "We have to go,” said Map. Impulsively, he hugged her as an older brother might do, and she patted him and stepped back. She sompiahed with self-conscious thoroughness to Veasna.

  "I will say good-bye to the children for you,” Mliss said. She stood at the school gate and laughed and waved, as if from the shore of another country where there had been no war.

  As the train began to pull away, shuddering under him, Map began to heave with sobs. Embarrassed, pained, Veasna looked away, blinking.

  They got to Battambang in pitch darkness. They camped out near the bus station. Map started to cry again. Veasna tapped his ribs and got him to shut up. Map fell asleep, his face pushed against Veasna's shoulder. At dawn they slipped down to the docks and found a boat.

  They didn't get back until late afternoon. They stopped for a drink in town and got back to camp well after midnight. Their sergeant came out in a sarong and flip-flops to berate them.

  Veasna broke into an old song.

  Sarika-keo euy

  See ai kawng kawng.

  Dear sarika birds, what are you eating, very noisily?

  It was a happy child's song about a courting couple. Veasna's face rose up into a smile and he started to clap and dance as he sang. What had come over him?

  He was beyond the power of the sergeant, who chuckled and growled. “Get out of here,” he said, waving them away. “I can't deal with you goons!” He stomped off back to bed.

  Veasna's face was swollen with smiles. As they walked back, he drew himself up tall again
st the stars. “I am in love with your sister,” he announced. “I want to marry her. So I will be going to Phnom Penh frequently. I want to check that that is okay with you."

  "It is not for me to approve."

  "Maybe. But I want to know this is okay with you."

  "It is okay with me...” Map trailed off. Something bothered him. “She seems distant."

  "Oh....she saw her parents killed. Did you see her with the children? She was not distant then. I want a wife, Map, and I want to have children. I am getting too old to be a ruffian."

  "Okay, okay, yes. But only if that is what Mliss wants, yes? This is not the old days, and I don't know Mliss well enough to play the head of the family with her."

  Veasna nodded. Something was pushing his cheeks up. “We will have to make up new families. Like those Chams in your old house. This war, it will be over soon, Map. Then I will go and be a farmer. What I want to do is buy a farm and have a wife and a house, and children. You could live there with us. You would be the uncle. You could live there with your wife too.” He was delighted, and slapped Map on the shoulder.

  At that hour the crickets and the geckos and the birds were all silent and still.

  "It would be a family,” said Map.

  "That's it exactly! We lose our families; we make a new one. The brothers share the house and the fields, and everybody works and brings in extra money."

  Map started to nod in agreement. “That is a very good thought. That would be a good action."

  "Then that is what we do, ah! You and me, Brother."

  They shook hands. Youl prom, agreed.

  * * * *

  The rainy season belonged to guerrillas.

  Conventional forces sank into the mud or retreated into garrisons and towns. Map and Veasna sometimes took a boat to Phnom Penh, which was miserable in the rain. Or they bounced in army convoys to Battambang and then took the train.

  Their comrades on the trains insisted Map and Veasna ride in the mortar car with its big guns. Even now the railway was so overgrown that sopping wet leaves would trail along the carriages through the open windows.

  They smiled and said, “We don't want you outside attracting fire."

  Sometimes the ground had washed away under the track. Sometimes a tree had fallen across it. The troops and passengers all ran out into the rain, shovelling mud and shoring up the track. Their stomachs jittered like nervous horses, listening out for the sound of gunfire.

  Once back inside Mliss's room, Veasna and Map would listen to the rain on the roof. Outside, they could hear the neighbours’ children playing, pouring rainwater from the gutter into jars and then in and out of the big cistern, the peang tuk. Mliss would worry about the children getting wet, and call them in. She soaked all her sheets drying the children's bare feet, while telling them old stories.

  Their mothers would saunter in, smiling. One of them had a beautiful chess set. They played in teams of two, and they were all very good. The games were long, complex, and clever. Mliss would watch and hide her face when Map or Veasna made a good move. Then it was her turn and when she won, she would bounce up and down and clap her hands like a little girl.

  Veasna bought a lamp so they could play long into the night, babysitting for the prostitutes when they had to be with clients. They in turn left little cakes. Lamplight, sleepy children on laps, constant voices, the making of tea, the smell of smoke, the clatter of the rain—all as in the old days.

  Veasna and Map now slept in her room. Like any family, they made an art of privacy. A blanket was hung across the room. Veasna and Map were used to the tough life. They slept on the floor. The little room began to fill with things: a vase for flowers, a small, low table, and a statue of a fat cat with a mouse.

  Quietly, things were changing. Every year the Vietnamese made a big show of sending troops home. Tanks or trucks packed with young Vietnamese would bounce their way east, their pots and pans jangling, past a state-organized parade. This year, the troops left quietly. Some of the top brass left as well. Cadres from provinces like Takeo or Svay Rieng reported a continual flow of trucks traveling across the Mekong and the border

  A bright-toothed young Party worker was buying fruit at the market. Even his spectacles seemed to smile, catching the light. “The Vietnamese are going. They really are going,” he said, swinging his bags full of fruit. “Now the question is, can our army fight the Khmers Rouges?” Veasna and Map, in their uniforms, felt a bristling in their cheeks. Could they?

  Mliss was more succinct. “If Pol Pot comes back,” she said, “I will commit suicide."

  In June the curfew went back from nine to ten p.m. Map would take off by himself, to leave the two lovers alone. He went to the Central Market and looked at things he could not buy. He saw boots, blacking, and mosquito nets, things that the army should have supplied to him, but which corruption sold to the black market instead.

  He saw very few books, but there was a stall with some hand-copied manuscripts or surviving printed texts. One of these was a history of Angkor. Map's heart yearned for it—a time of Cambodian greatness—and he remembered how ashamed he had been in front of Mliss's children not to know more. He bought the book and went without supper.

  Thunder would suddenly explode overhead and rainwater would cascade onto Map's head and shoulders, soaking him in an instant. Old men would slush past on bicycles. At such times Map might buy a girl. Without Veasna to cheer him up, buying a woman felt sad and second rate.

  The rooms would have blankets instead of doors. A girl took off her clothes. She was slim and beautiful, beautiful breasts, and perfect firm legs. Somehow he just did not have the heart. He put on his shirt to leave. Had she displeased him? No, no, he said. Everything was fine.

  "Oh,” she said. “You want love. I can't sell love. Next best thing?” She tried to look cheerful.

  He shook his head.

  "You should take it. You are not rich and you are not handsome, and you have paid me for it."

  Maybe she liked him. Maybe she was just trying to hurt his feelings for not wanting her. She said, with a sideways smile, “It has to be better than going back to wherever you are going and being alone, or the one who is left out."

  It was true. He stayed. They even talked a little bit. She was a Khmer Krom, an ethnic Cambodian from Vietnam. She had a child, what else was she to do? “I can't wait around to become a virgin again. And no one will want to marry me now."

  He came back at nine-thirty. He could still see lamplight through the window, and he could hear his brother and his sister singing songs and laughing. The New Year star was still hanging outside the doorway. He was home.

  He opened the door and both Veasna and Mliss cried, “There he is!"

  "We've done it,” said Veasna, glowing orange in lamplight. “We have decided to marry."

  Map saw the fire dance in his sister's eyes. She beamed and looked content, as if finally she had eaten something.

  Veasna and Mliss were married that October, when it was dry and safer to travel. This time the train was full of soldiers, including some of their reprobate buddies. The wedding was held in the school. The soldiers lined up in their uniforms, along with some of the teachers and the huge and angular German headmistress.

  Somewhere there is a photograph. In it, Mliss wears silken trousers and epaulettes that dangle with beads and a tiny brass Khmer crown on her head. For some reason, she's scowling. Her two teacher bridesmaids look coy or pleased and the German headmistress fixes the camera with a face determined to express amusement and joy, her long arms stretching around almost all of them. Her cold blue eyes chilled Map's blood.

  Veasna's mother, Mrs. Hing Boupha, is there with the most fixed and winning smile of all. She had taken to smoking cigarettes and herded all the other guests around using the glowing butt as a cattle prod while effusively correcting Mliss's grammar.

  In the photograph Veasna stands much taller than anyone else, holding a basket of plastic flowers with his bride, and he smil
es like an old man looking back over a life full of prosperity and grandchildren. His big, smooth, veined hand cradles the flowers. They hide the swelling of Mliss's belly.

  People who see the photograph do not recognize Map. They say he looks like a little boy. His big teeth shine out in a huge grin, and his eyes are open with hope. The flash has slightly overexposed the film, burning away his spots. Map is almost young and handsome. He comes up to his brother-in-law's shoulder. He looks beside himself with happiness.

  The wedding was happy, but quick, snatched in comparison to how weddings used to be. In the old days there would have been long feasting, music, and chanting by lay preachers. Instead one of the teachers played wedding music on a cassette and the teachers improvised a dance, a ghost of traditional hand gestures and formal patterns.

  The soldiers had to get back to Siem Reap; the train would not wait. From Dangrek, from Koh Ker, from all the border provinces there was news of increased fighting.

  On October 4, the moderate KPNLF—the “Khmers Bleus"—took over Kandaol. They had intercepted radio calls giving orders to government troops. The Hun Sen Army tanks had refused to go in, saying they had no fuel. The ground troops had retreated, saying that they had run out of ammo. KPNLF videos showed warehouses full of both.

  Why did no one understand? Government troops didn't want to kill other Cambodians, particularly not Sihanoukists or republicans. They just didn't want the Khmers Rouges back.

  Cambodians wanted the Vietnamese out of their country and China to stop feeding the Khmers Rouges arms. They wanted America to stop supporting China. They wanted the Soviet Union to solve its own problems. They wanted it all to stop. They were exhausted.

  By November, Prime Minister Hun Sen would formally request that the Vietnamese reinforce his troops.

  Back in Siem Reap, things got tough. The army wanted to show it didn't need the Vietnamese to fight the guerrillas. Map and Veasna were lectured on the war. They were made to play games, running up hills to take fictional resistance strongholds, only the resistance never shot back. Nobody could shoot anything; there was no ammo.