by Arnold Zable
The walls of the central room are insulated with newspaper, on which there hang Spring Festival posters and photos of the boatman and me, taken on previous visits. The floor is clay, the furniture basic: several wooden stools and a table. His grandchild, a boy of five, sits on a stool beside him. We eat egg soup, soya beans and vegetables for lunch, washed down with white wine and spirits.
Back on the water, he points out features of the lake and the surrounding landscape. The boatman views the world with a child’s rapt attention. The features have stories to tell, and he is their interpreter. He releases a hand from one of the oars and points. Look. Look. That vertical rock jutting out of the lake is a candle to heaven. Look. The larger rock in the middle of the lake is the general, and the rocks strewn around him are his soldiers awaiting orders to charge into battle.
Look. That rock is known as the monkey, and those rolling hills are a flock of swallows. If you look carefully, you can see they are about to take flight. Look, and you will see them move, just a fraction. He holds his thumb and forefinger close, and rocks the boat with unrestrained laughter, then sings ballads of ill-fated lovers: Even a good horse cannot go any faster to Beijing/ Even competent officials cannot help a family in trouble/ And even the most devoted of parents cannot help their children in their love problems.
It is late afternoon. The boatman’s strokes are precise and even. The oars slice the water, leaving barely a ripple. An egret stands motionless on a rock pillar. Wild ducks take flight, and their shadows form black streaks on the lake’s surface. A flock of gulls pass overhead, wings gilded by the setting sunlight. A farmer, carrying a mattock, descends a narrow path, making his way home from his farmlands.
The boatman falls silent. He scans the waters about him. He lengthens his strokes, then allows the boat to glide on its own momentum. The first stars are appearing; a crescent moon is rising; the islets and rocks are jagged outlines. The boatman knows I do not want it to end, that I crave more time to take it in; he takes a circuitous route back to the landing.
The boatman is the vital force in the setting. Without him the lake would be stagnant. He carries the smell of earth, water and labour. He watches over the lake, and watches over me. He instils confidence. He is there, in the darkness, after I am gone, rowing back home to his island; and his presence remains with me now, long after I have returned to my apartment.
And how to encompass that Sunday walk, on a winter’s day, climbing above the city of Guiyang on East Mountain, past the last factory, and the last of the back-of-the-truck Sunday markets. The vehicles gathered in a vacant lot, and the goods laid out on blankets and makeshift tables—pyramids of noodles, eels writhing in buckets, hessian sacks overflowing with red kidney beans.
The muddied path ascended beyond the commerce and busy-ness. The crowd milled outside a house on a hillside hamlet. I was invited into a tree-lined courtyard. Upwards of twenty people were bent over woks, cooking rice, pork and vegetables. Bouquets of flowers and wreaths were lined up against the walls, and white pennants hung from the upper branches.
A group of women tended an altar on a coffin, made up of candles and incense, paper cut-outs of male and female figures and offerings of food in dishes laid out in front of the photo of an elderly man—the latest inductee into the gallery of ancestors. I was a guest at a Taoist funeral, ushered inside the house and given a seat beside members of the deceased’s family. Women sat with babies in their arms, and infants crawled on the tiled floor. Visitors filed in and out to pay their respects, their voices reduced to a murmur.
The men and women sat separately. The bereaved relatives wore white cloths wound into turbans. A hum of subdued chatter was interrupted by the cries of the dead man’s son, triggering the weeping of fellow mourners. Their cries rose in a shrill chorus, then withdrew into an unnerving stillness, broken when the food was carried in from the courtyard. The mood abruptly shifted from mourning to exuberance. The wine and spirits were flowing, and we stood, arms on each other’s shoulders, singing.
I continued my climb, behind horse-drawn carts loaded with sand and boulders. The horses laboured up a clay path that led to a Taoist temple. Beside the gateway stood a two-roomed cottage. I was invited inside, as if expected, by two men in ankle-length blue gowns.
The older man, in his eighties, warmed his hands by a coal stove that sat between two beds, while the other, a man in his forties, stood in the adjoining room, stirring the evening meal on a wood stove. His grey-black tresses were tied in a bun, and his gown hugged his plump figure. He brought a kettle to the boil, and served tea. We sat beside the wood stove. Outside, a winter’s day, and inside the three of us drinking quietly.
I moved on from the gatekeepers’ cottage. The narrowing path wound to a pagoda-style temple. Carpenters were at work on the veranda, restoring the lattice work, replacing window frames where the old ones had rotted. I climbed beyond the temple on a stone path built into the cliff face.
The ascent was made only slightly less dangerous by a guardrail still in the process of being erected. Labourers hauled rocks from the carts and delivered them to the stonemasons. The exhausted horses, heads bowed, stood silently, released from their burden. The masons squatted on the path, carving out steps to restore those worn down by the feet of countless pilgrims.
The steps petered out at a giant Buddha sculpted in the rockface. The statue was riddled with chinks where it had been stoned, a decade earlier, by mobs of Red Guards in a wild fury. The mountain was alive with work: the sawing of wood, and the clinking of metal on stone. Gathering clouds hung like a shroud over the city below. Standing beside the Buddha and the masons at work on its restoration, I sensed that which outlives the rise and fall of dynasties, counterpointed by the stillness of this moment.
How to convey all this? And the many routes I had followed in the valley, the farmers plying me with drink, then leaving me to make my way on crooked paths that inevitably led me to the stone bridge, the river. The willow and the mill taking shape, the tiled roof coming into focus.
Then, through the open doorway, the sight of the miller going about his work, a dependable presence, and, minutes later, the singing of the kettle, the deliberate movements as he poured the water into the teapot. And the two of us—the foreigner and the miller—seated side by side, cups in hand, engaged in wordless conversation.
The heading of the couplet was obvious: Huaxi Watermill. As for the two sentences, the task seemed impossible. How could I emulate, in English, the classical Chinese form: the three, five or seven characters that each line was composed of? These were conventions, said M, that even the anarchic Han Shan followed.
I chose to concentrate, as he had advised, on the meaning. I deliberated over each line, and considered alternatives. I weighed each word. Crossed out. Rephrased. Rearranged the order, adding and subtracting, retrieving and rejecting, backtracking, then moving forward.
I focused on the letters, as they physically took shape, with the care I had observed when Q translated his father’s final testament and the care I had seen taken by market calligraphers, writing letters and statements on behalf of semi-literate farmers; and as I had noted in the deliberate way that the miller had entered the names and amounts of grain delivered by the farmers into his ledger.
And I saw the limits of words, of language as a futile attempt to encapsulate lived experience, and doomed to a kind of failure. I wanted to convey the detached warmth of the miller and his acceptance of my presence, and to do justice to the tales I have recounted here, and those that will remain untold, for that’s how it is with all journeys.
I paused over one word—in the second line of the couplet—for a long time. I could not decide between ‘mind’ and ‘heart’. Finally, I wrote the couplet, taming my untidy script, acutely aware that this is a country where the handwriting itself is an integral part of the content.
N lays out the Four Treasures: the inkstick, the brushes, the paper and the inkstand. He adds water to the bowl carved int
o the inkstand, and stirs the inkstick in a circular motion. It is his parting gift, a demonstration of the Four Treasures in action. The inkstick dissolves in the water. He tests the texture and consistency, and when he is satisfied, he chooses a brush, dips it in and applies the brush to the red paper.
Each stroke is an act of control and focus. In his calm approach to his work and the firmness of his strokes N personifies the qualities his grandmother wished for him—to be kind but strong, at ease, yet disciplined. Hand and mind in equilibrium. Each stroke glistens for a moment, then is absorbed by the paper.
At this point, there is no turning back, says N. Each brushstroke is spontaneous, but once painted it is permanent. It cannot be duplicated; the calligrapher’s current mental state is captured and fixed on paper. I am reminded of the testament penned by Q’s father on the eve of his death, the sense of urgency he must have felt as he applied each brushstroke, and his battle to steady his shaking hands, taming them one last time into submission.
Each stroke, says N, must be applied in the prescribed order. He paints the characters representing Huaxi Watermill horizontally. Hua meaning flower, xi meaning stream: hence flower-stream. The couplet poses a greater challenge. N takes time over the translation, seeking characters that will best convey the meaning of the original.
He paints the first vertical line. People reading it, he says, will imagine different landscapes. They will see their hometowns and the places they have travelled. They will be reminded of their times of exile, and their partings and reunions. They will see the alternative paths, the chance encounters, and the life choices that have led them here.
He paints the second vertical line. The two lines are in conversation, N says. They conduct a dialogue, which will begin when the words are in place by the doorway. There will be people passing by, he says, who will stop to contemplate each character and bring their own interpretation. Some will step in close and inspect each stroke with a critical eye. Others will step back to view the entire scene: the heading, the vertical lines, then the mill, and the mountains—the backdrop as a living canvas.
Calligraphy is the highest artform, N says, and each line is suggestive of many meanings. When he paints the character for mind, he tells me that my debate over this word had found its own solution. In Mandarin, he says, there is a character for mind and heart that can be read as one and the same.
We take the completed banners to the mill, unfurl them by the doorway, and work with the miller to glue them into place. Then we step back and survey our work, making sure the vertical lines on either side of the door are of the same height, and the heading centred above the lintel. When we are done, the miller pours the tea. The two lines by the door have begun their conversation.
We sit, side by side, and observe the contours of the limestone ranges, the tableau contained by the open doorway. They are as reassuring in their familiarity as the scenes that may have greeted Han Shan from his retreat on the heights of Cold Mountain. We sit on wooden stools, drinking quietly. And beneath us, the waterwheel: Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Round and round, an endless churning.
I come from a distant place to Huaxi Watermill.
Here I feel at peace; my mind becomes still.
I met Keo Narom in Phnom Penh on 26 January 2013 at a workshop I conducted for Cambodian writers. She approached me during the afternoon break. She had a story she wished to tell me, she said, and handed me her card: ‘Keo Narom, PhD. Researcher and book writer for children’ printed in Khmer and English.
We had little time to talk during that first meeting, but Narom did not appear hurried. She was composed and quietly spoken. She talked of the deaths of her husband, her father, her brothers and sisters and her four children during the Khmer Rouge era. A younger sister survived. Ma petite soeur, Narom says with affection. It was, she would later tell me, the first time she had begun to recount her story. After all, she had to find a way to get on with life.
The grief will never be overcome. How can it be? Narom does not allow herself to dwell too long on her lost ones lest the ghosts return to haunt her. En avance, she says as we return to the workshop. Always forward.
A full moon night. The dogs are barking. They interrupt my sleep as they do most evenings. The barking begins across the road from my hotel room at the late-night eatery that is a pit stop for tuk-tuk drivers and nightshift workers. A black mutt sprawls by the entrance.
The night arouses its fury. One shrill bark begets another, stretching to the far reaches of the city. Each bark cuts deeper into my sleep until I am fully awake. Outside, five floors down, dogs are conducting a long-distance argument, while in the eatery the customers are engaged in post-midnight conversation.
At dawn the dogs are at it again. I give up, get dressed, take the lift to the lobby and set out on the half-hour walk to the Tonle Sap River. The streets are lined with garlanded portraits of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. His body lies in state in the royal palace, as it has since his death in Beijing the previous October. Sticks of incense burn on street altars set up in his honour. His cremation is to take place in two weeks, in a purpose-built stupa.
People are out walking and exercising. Groups of bare-chested men play kick-shuttlecock. The shuttles hurtle over the nets at great speed; the players’ skills are breathtaking. Entire families are camped on the streets. Some lie in hammocks slung between trees on the footpaths. Others go about their morning ablutions. Pilgrims file across the royal forecourt to lay flowers at Sihanouk’s state altar; the chants of Buddhist monks ring out over a loudspeaker.
I have come full circle. When I was last here, in January 1970, Sihanouk was in power and war was raging in Vietnam alongside a secret war to the north, in Laos. I had travelled for weeks through both countries. Arriving in Phnom Penh from war-torn Saigon was a relief. Back then, it seemed Cambodia was an enclave of peace, bar the not-so-secret US bombings on the Cambodian–Vietnamese border, ostensibly to destroy Viet Cong hideouts.
Sihanouk appeared to be the undisputed leader—jazz saxophonist, film director, actor, scriptwriter, composer and the founding father of the republic—a dilettante for all seasons, playing off all sides to remain neutral. He presided over a low-rise city graced with Parisian-style boulevards and villas built in the style of its colonial masters.
The peace was deceptive. Forces were building. Foreign powers and their proxies were vying for ascendancy: the US and China jousting in the shadows. Sihanouk was about to be overthrown and the US-backed Lon Nol installed as leader. Civil war was brewing.
I travelled northwest from Phnom Penh to a Cambodian border post, and set out, rucksack on my back, to walk a barren stretch of dirt to the Thai border: No Man’s Land. I recall time passing slowly. Each sound was amplified—the faint drone of a truck, the crunch of dirt beneath my feet, each birdcall—alternating with an uneasy silence.
I was exposed, an easy target in the sights of guns trained on me from both sides. As I walked, one stretch of barbed wire was retreating and, in the distance, another approaching. The stillness heightened my sense of fragility, but in an unexpected surge of defiance, I was tempted to stop mid-walk, put down my pack and set up camp within sight of the two borders. The tension eased as I drew close to Thailand, though I felt a sense of disquiet at departing Cambodia, a country where I had felt welcome.
No one, however, could have foreseen the horror about to unfold, the years of murder and terror that were to descend, as this small country was subjected to the fury of contending powers, driving its people into the hands of fanatical ideologues. I could move on. There would be no such option for the people of the country I was leaving.
After that first meeting with Narom I was eager to hear the full story. I seized the opportunity that evening as we were being driven through the streets of Phnom Penh to a writers’ gathering. I sat in the back. R, the convener of the workshops, was driving. Narom sat beside him, dressed in a black and grey checked sarong, an orange silk scarf and mauve jacket. Her dyed-black hair was swep
t back in a blue headband. Her complexion was strikingly youthful for a woman in her seventies.
The streets by the foreshore were gridlocked. Motorbikes wove in and out of the traffic, finding openings within millimetres of the stationary vehicles. Upwards of one million mourners were making their way to the city to pay their last respects to their ‘Father-King’.
To our right ran the waters of the Tonle Sap River. Fishing boats and cruisers moved to and from the shoreline. The river was more enticing at night, free of the sight of refuse littering the banks and the midday haze that leached the water of its colour. To our left, the palace blazed with light. The forecourt was crowded with families strolling on a humid evening.
At first Narom spoke in French, as she had during our first conversation hours earlier. But my French was not fluent enough to grasp the nuances. She switched to Khmer, and R interpreted. We inched past the palace towards the cremation stupa. I was grateful for the heavy traffic and the process of translation. They provided time for me to take in what Narom was saying, and to reflect on the enormity of the story she was telling.
Keo Narom’s ordeal began when the Khmer Rouge cadres occupied the city on 17 April 1975. They entered Phnom Penh from the north, in black shirts and black trousers, red sashes tied at the waist, sandals carved out of tyres, and red bandanas. They made their way on foot, on the backs of trucks and in requisitioned vehicles, guns strapped to their backs, bullet belts strung around their shoulders: a ragged army of young men and teenagers moving into the city in advance of their leaders.
Sick of five years of civil war, residents lined the streets and greeted them as liberators. Keo Narom and her husband waved from their balcony. Many were surprised at how young the soldiers were and at their air of suspicion and incomprehension. Some noticed a chilling detail. The boy-soldiers were grim-faced. Something about them was beyond reach. They moved with robotic purpose. Despite the welcome and displays of euphoria, their faces were hardened.
