The King's Last Song

by Geoff Ryman

  Rajapati's tiny toy palanquin lurched forward towards the building site. In front of the scaffolding, palace women were setting pots of noodles on low tables. Embroidered cloth had been laid out beside them over the ground.

  One single gateway had been finished. On its lintel were freshly carved words.

  The King stood in front of it, and sighed.

  "I am a soldier and an ascetic. I find words desert me. I have never written anything worth reading in my entire life. But this inscription was written by my son, Virakumara."

  Who hates you in his heart.

  The King blinked and looked down, and said quietly. “My other fine son Indravarman will read it to you."

  What does an older brother feel to be overtaken by a younger? How does it feel to have your older brother killed? Poor Virakumara. His shoulders were rounded from too much reading and his ribs too obvious from continued abstinence. He'd grown a Brahmin's beard. What happens when old men have young men's occupations.

  Indravarman looked like an athlete who had just won a wrestling match. He grinned at the workers, at the guests.

  He turned and said, “It's a very long inscription, Father. And a very hot sun."

  "My son wishes to spare you.” Flicker. “And it is not an altogether happy day.” Pause. Think of your dying queen. Whisper. “Thank you, Son."

  Rajapati smiled at the theatrical skill. One might almost think you had a heart, Father.

  With graceful ease, Indravarman summarized.

  "This stone consecrates the City of Holy Victory, Nagara Jayasri. It will be a new kind of place. It will be where monks can come to learn and live and study. It will be a place of administration. All the people who make the City work will find their houses here. The badges of authority, such as the Sacred Sword, will be housed here. Above all else it will be a temple to all religions, and all the Kings. This palace temple will be dedicated to my grandfather, who was compassionate. The Rajavihara was dedicated to my grandmother, who was wise. There will be a new hospital here, and a great library and a hall of music and dancing. In this way we establish that the Path is a marriage of Wisdom and Compassion."

  He summarized the Sanskrit text, and gave examples from the Khmer list of donations made by Queen Jayarajadevi. Indravarman looked sad and dignified. Finally he finished.

  There was a long silence, filled with the sounds of wind and water from the reservoir.

  The King spoke next, his voice shaking. “The real spirit of this temple is that of my beloved wife, Holy Victory Queen. The stone tells it.” He flicked his hand towards it. “It tells how many bolts of cloth, and gold this and gold that she gave to this foundation and other places. But that is not what she really gave. She gave the ideas that live behind these things. She showed all of us the Path, on which we now walk as a people.” His voice went as thin as a child's. “Without her, this building would be uninhabited stone."

  How do you get away with it? Rajapati wondered. From anyone else such displays of emotion would be unseemly.

  "Across that lake, there is an island, and that island is her idea. On that island will be a new temple."

  Another new temple, what a surprise. And just what we needed.

  "This new temple will be open to people of all categories. The humblest will be able to go there to wash away sin. No linga, no yoni, no high king giving rites and rituals. Families, babies, old men, the sick, those who have laboured all their lives or who survived these horrible, terrible, dreadful wars. They will go there to wash, to hear birds, to listen to music, and to be in a state of peace."

  He's crying. You can't have a king who cries.

  You can if the people know his wife is dying. What a great heart he has, they will say, truly he is the King of Compassion, the King of Love, but I know you, Father, and I know you are the reason why Aunty is dying. Which is why Indradevi isn't here, nor even Rajendradevi. You are lucky that three of your remaining sons have come. And your old Cham Crown Prince, he's causing trouble now, isn't he?

  Jayavarman breathed in the world again. “So. This new city is consecrated. It is consecrated by the sweat of the people who build it, and the ideas and love that come from those who thought of it. It is consecrated by what it is. Follow the Path.” He blew out. “Now, let the labourers eat."

  No one moved. The spirits moved in the wind. The dust moved. Everything else, even the birds and crickets seemed to be stilled.

  "Eat,” beckoned the King again, and held out his hands towards the men. With a sound like the pattering of light rain, the labourers began to move. They walked towards the steaming reed bowls and the folding tables and the smell of rice and cardamom.

  Indravarman talked urgently to the King. The King's eyes closed and he smiled in gratitude.

  Indravarman turned and ran back to the tables. He was so happy to eat with the workers, to share the meal with them.

  Every inch the worthy heir.

  The visitors returned to their boats.

  The King stomped along the landing towards his barge. Rajapati thought: my father always walks as if he's trying to punch holes in the ground, or stamp his words permanently into the earth. The King's back was turned towards him and it was the back of a man who wanted to be alone, who wanted to be in the prow of the boat by himself, with sun, water, breeze, and lake birds. Instead he sat cross-legged in the shade of the middle deck, facing the procession filing onto the boat with his eyes closed and a smile imposed.

  The King meditated. He was always doing that in public. It was how he wanted to be seen. But this time, his face did not glow with serenity. This time it was puffed out with unhappiness and struggle. The eyebrows were wrenched and twisted with grief and hurt.

  The things you have done, Father. Sometimes they show.

  * * * *

  The boat glided from Victory Lake to the huge and ancient ten-kilometre artificial Lake of Yashodhara.

  Sunlight danced on the artificial lake. The boat swung around, and there, ranged before them, was the great sight of Yashodharapura.

  The biggest city on the planet, now enclosed in a wall of laterite. What stuff it is. Laterite cuts like wet clay when it first comes out of the earth. But it hardens in air to lightweight, enduring stone. Red-grey laterite, honey-colored now with the sun on it. A perfect wall of stone, extending along most of the horizon. Like a saw blade, the top was arranged with niche stones, thousands of them. And inside the sheltering hood of each was an image of the Buddha.

  Thousands upon thousands of images of the Buddha.

  On far banks, boys fished, skimming nets on poles over the surface of the water.

  Women in groups squatted, washing their clothing.

  Boys had driven their oxen down the earthen banks into the lake to drink. You could see the mud-colored swirls where the beasts had trod. The boys were jumping off the backs of the beasts into the deeper water.

  Far out towards the first island temple behind them, little fishing skiffs plied their way. Over it all, in scintillating patterns, white water-birds rose and fell.

  This is your doing too, Father. This happy kingdom, this place of peace, this giant among nations. You gave it back to us.

  Did you have to make yourself inhuman to do it? To make all the Khmers your children, did you have to kill your real ones?

  The King's back still did not move.

  The barges glided up to the landing beside the Victory Road. Elephants and giant parasols waited for them, men and animals shifting from one foot to another. Prince Rajapati's little bier, with its tiny pointed cupola in the shape of a house, was hoisted up and he was borne up the steps to the elephant platform.

  The King rode on alone.

  Children ran screaming and laughing. The King was back before his public. The King called down to the children. He knew some of their names.

  Their beautiful mothers sauntered next to their children, hushing them and beaming up at their King.

  Everything was new. New wooden houses stood on polish
ed green poles, with new palm-frond or wood-tile roofs. Grannies spun new cloth. Young mothers nursed new babies. Tiny plots of ground sprouted fruit from new trees. Everything smelled of wood smoke, cardamom, hot greenery, rice paper drying in the sun, and syrup boiling in vats. Even the smells of fish from the lake were new, delicious, invoking the scents of barbecuing to come later in the day.

  The happiest place on earth.

  The great elephants lumbered along Victory Road. Stalls sold heaps of grain, valuable tree barks, medicines, or embroidered cloth. People whose religion allowed them to kill offered pork and the fruits of the forest hunt.

  A skinny man with broken brown teeth and the moustache of a Brahmin ran out of his stall holding up a reed bowl. “My Lord, my King, Jaya, Jaya!” The man laughed at his own daring. “Oh, Universal King, my food is especially good this morning. Fresh fish, lemon grass, noodles. Oh so fragrant! Please, King, please stop and eat!"

  The King did. The elephant was pulled around. The King's boy swung down from the side basket and took up the reed bowl.

  The stall owner was overjoyed. He bowed and bowed and laughed and bowed again. The King pressed the dish between his fingers and ate, and then offered some to his boy.

  "It's good, it's good!” the King called down. He then ate again from the bowl the boy had touched. “You have saved me the trouble of having lunch."

  The man was gleeful and grinned and bowed, and the women under the screens leaned against the posts, arms around each other. These were not attitudes of disrespect, but attitudes of ease, as if they were among their own family. All their faces beamed.

  This, thought Rajapati, is how every king would wish to be seen.

  You have to acknowledge. He does it through fearlessness. The fearlessness comes from pure thinking. Because he emphasizes that the King is always a man, he is not afraid of looking human. This humility wins hearts.

  The King is not afraid of being poisoned, because he knows his people love him. He is not in any case afraid of dying, for he can explain death, and gives death no power over his actions.

  Oh King, you know that stall owner would now do anything in his power for you. His family will tease him, but they will also say: we have a good king. That man will save the reed bowl as a souvenir and say: the King ate from my bowl. He will say to customers: see how good my food is.

  And his sons will die for you.

  The procession walked up the Victory Road towards the eastern gate.

  In the old days, you would have think carefully about the symbolic meanings of the gate you used. Coming through the east gate would symbolize something or other, say the King coming from the direction of Life.

  This King would say, I always come from the direction of Life, even if I come from the west or the south. With this King, you come in the Eastern Gate simply because that is the most direct way to come.

  That was the most annoying thing of all—to be wounded by a man who is perfect in every other way. Who would be interested in hearing your complaints against such a man, such a King? They whisper that he is a Boddhisattva.

  The procession passed through the gate. The Gods on one side, holding the Naga serpent, the demons on the other, churning the Sea of Milk. If you were a Hindu, that was auspicious. If you were Buddhist, the Naga was the Rainbow Bridge that connects the worlds. You were entering a holy, Universal City.

  The four faces of the Buddharaja stared down. If you were Hindu, these would be the faces of the three gods, the fourth being Buddha. If you were Buddhist, it would be the Four Noble Truths or the four cardinal directions or the four great rivers.

  Oh King, you mean everything and nothing at the same time.

  Once through those gates, you were in the core of the new City, the Indrapattha.

  Here, the red wood buildings housed palace slaves, officials, and children. They were noble structures, carved with Naga serpents on the lintels.

  Ahead loomed the towers of justice, where criminals were kept, and just above the rooftops of the houses, the upper storey of the Flying Palace. In front of that, the half-mile long terrace was carved to look as if it were borne up by flying beasts, garudas. The earthbound palace was an image of the celestial dwelling that flew in the skies, amid cloud fields, and cloud-flowers.

  Over that the private family temple gleamed like a golden bell.

  The elephants passed through the gates, and the families of the court began to dismount. Rajapati's bier was carried on. The King continued alone, up the steps of the temple.

  "Take me to join my father in the temple,” said Rajapati.

  "You are to go the palace and rest and eat,” said his servants. They looked embarrassed, poor fellows.

  "Your instructions were to carry the bier to palace?"

  "Yes, Prince."

  "Then do so,” said Rajapati. And he belly-flopped himself out of the bier.

  "Lord!” they cried.

  "Go on, the King can't punish you. You did what you were told. I'll tell him that. Now go on!"

  And the Prince bat-crawled on his arms, hobbling after his father, one step at a time. Undignified? Oh, yes.

  Frankly, that's the problem of the people who look at me.

  The unfinished man hauled himself like a tree frog up the steep staircase. The stucco was gilded and glowing. The statues had gold leaf pressed over them. Around the base, plates of gold had been drilled into the stone. All these things were the gifts of the Holy Victory Queen. How fitting then, that she should rest here.

  Since she evidently no longer wished to rest beside her husband.

  On the top of the temple stood a simple red pavilion. Rajapati hauled himself into it.

  The King stood over Jayarajadevi's hammock, rocking it gently. He looked up. “Oh God,” he croaked in utter despair. “Not you. Of all times."

  "Thank you for that sincere greeting."

  "I don't want you now, go away."

  "No change there, then."

  The King looked at him searchingly, with a sadness that could be mistaken for affection. “You know, you have a fine head. If only something kindly or wise ever came out of it."

  "Again, Father, it is your complete sincerity of expression that has made you the King you are."

  "You're right."

  "Then at least we agree on something."

  "The Queen is dead, ‘Pati. Leave me in peace."

  "No, Father.” Rajapati's voice skipped. “I'm here to torment you."

  The King's jaw dropped and he turned. He almost chuckled. “You're even worse than I thought."

  "No, I just can't resist a singeing reply. Words are all that is left to me. My dancing tongue, my gouging steel pen."

  The King groaned and hid his head.

  "Right, to business. It'll be over with soon, and you will get your wish. I'll leave you, finally and permanently. But first, a little hymn of my own composition. You, Father are Mara. Mara who came and tempted the Buddha with Kingship. Buddha turned him down. You, Father, are war. You are war and power and ruthlessness. You are oppression and enslavement and falsehood. And the summit of your falseness is that people love you for it. You are evil."

  The King's face was bleary with misery and, more amusingly, boredom. “People aren't evil. They sometimes do evil things."

  "Such as killing their son because he left the Path?"

  Silence. Then the King nodded. “Yes. We could cavil a bit. The person who killed Suryakumara was the man who shot the arrow, but I know what you mean. I did send him to his death."

  "And killed your once First Queen in the process. I trust that her death was unintended, but with you....I....can't....be....sure.” Rajapati let the last words drip out slowly.

  The King turned his bulk like a wounded elephant. “I grieve, ‘Pati. I grieve."

  Rajapati felt pity tremble. “I know you do, Father."

  "She was so beautiful. She had such a mind, so full of light and kindness and love..."

  "You didn't deserve her."


  "No, I didn't.” He took up her hand and squeezed it, then pressed it to his face.

  "I wish you wouldn't keep agreeing with me, Father. It makes it difficult to tell you off."

  The King looked up again. “What do you want?"

  Rajapati's eyes boggled. “Now. That was a surprise. First time you've ever asked me. Let's see. First and foremost, I want to die. Desperately and really and finally. I'll be finished here in just a moment, since you as always need me out of the way, and then I'll....I don't know....fire, water, a great height, something will turn up. It will hurt, but only briefly."

  The King wiped his face, calmed himself, and then looked down at Rajapati on the floor. “Can you talk seriously?"

  "I try and avoid it whenever possible."

  "I know.” Slowly, as if in pain, the King shuffled forward, and lowered himself onto the stone.

  "But I'll make an exception if it hurts you."

  The King took Rajapati's hand and held it, and looked into his face and said again, “What do you want?"

  "I just said..."

  "No, no, no. You're not used to winning, so you don't recognize it. But you just won. I'm asking. What do want?"

  Rajapati tried to pull his hand away. What he wanted was too big to say, and too small.

  The King spoke in a low voice, looking at the hand. “I'd say first and foremost you want to hide. And I've been forcing you to go out in public. I thought that was a way of making you feel part of things."

  Rajapati went cold. “It was a way of demonstrating your ideology."

  The King paused, swallowed, made himself be patient. “Since my ideology is to be compassionate, you're right, it was.” He sniffed. “No one's looking now."

  Jayavarman stroked Rajapati's hair. His eyes were staring, but the smile was about to crumple into weeping. “You want to be king. You would have been a very good king. But you never can be. Many people think what happened to you is the result of sin in a previous life..."

  Rajapati was alarmed to hear his own voice shaking and see the world around him dissolve in water. “What they say, what they say is that I'm the result of what happens when categories get out of order, and that what happened is like a mongrel dog mating with a civet and being shat out...” Rajapati couldn't finish.