In the Shadow of the Banyan (36 page)

Nodding in the direction of the river, the district leader continued, “The monsoon season is upon us and soon the Mekong will overflow, turning land into sea. But together we will build embankments to control this mighty dragon. Together we will demonstrate that through our collective effort, we can build with our bare hands a mountain ridge from—”

Suddenly he stopped. A group of Revolutionary soldiers had appeared out of nowhere in an oxcart. They marched toward us. The lead soldier thundered up the steps and approached the district leader, whispering in his ear. The district leader shook his head; the Revolutionary soldier insisted, hissing into the district leader’s ear. After a moment, the district leader faced us again and said, “You must excuse me.” Without further explanation, he descended the stairway and, together with the Kamaphibal, left in a hurry, climbing into the oxcart waiting at the entrance.

The crowd was abuzz. The lead soldier spun around and faced us, and I noticed a long, sickle-shaped scar running the length of his right cheek. “Quiet!” he growled, the scar twitching violently. “Only the newcomers stay! The rest of you leave!”

No one moved.

“NOW!”

The townsfolk began to file past us, murmuring but not daring to
meet our eyes, or his. They seemed to know exactly who the soldier was and their manners and attitude said this was not someone you argued with. Finally, when the last of the townsfolk were gone and it was just our group again, the soldier with the scar said, “Those of you with any family members missing, tell us your family history and background. Give us complete and accurate details—your real names, your relatives’ real names. Tell us how you got separated from them, when, and why—the
real
story. We’ll help you find them. But we can do that only if you tell us the truth.” He looked around, his eyes darting, the scar on his cheek quivering as if it were a live thing. “Now, those of you with missing relatives, raise your hand.”

Slowly, people began to raise their hands. Every single person, it seemed, except Big Uncle and Mama. The soldier narrowed his eyes at us. I broke out in a sweat.

twenty-five

O
ur arrival at Ksach seemed like a deliverance. The town had rules and rhythm, a kind of logic that didn’t exist in Pok and Mae’s village. First of all, the morning after our arrival, we were given rice, cloth, and other essential items to get us settled in. Then in the subsequent weeks, as the whole town gathered to receive the monthly ration, we were each allowed one can of rice per day. To keep it simple, we were told, no distinction was made between a child and an adult, each received the same amount, the rationale being a six-year-old boy who worked hard might eat more than an ailing old grandmother who couldn’t eat much of anything. While market-style bartering was not allowed, a simple exchange of food or household items between neighbors and friends was acceptable. In our spare time we could grow vegetables or catch fish from the river to supplement our rations, but all livestock was the collective property of the town and reserved for communal feasting. Work began an hour after sunrise and ended an hour before sunset, at which time the large bronze bell at the town center would sound for all to hear. Children from ages five to eleven went to school, either in the morning or the afternoon, depending on our preference, and we could even switch back and forth. So off to school I went, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, depending on my mood, and in the month or two of my perfect attendance, all we learned were songs:

Red, red blood showers the ground,

Democratic Kampuchea our Motherland!

Shining blood of our farmers and workers,

Shining blood of our Revolutionary soldiers!

The Red Flag of the Revolution!

We didn’t learn to read or write a single word, and even though I already knew how, I never let on. It was clear we must keep quiet, keep what we knew hidden. So we carried on, making ourselves fit in, and this time around it seemed easier, perhaps because Ksach was a close-knit community, yet open and welcoming in a way Stung Khae never was. People walked in and out of one another’s homes as if they were one big family, exchanging dishes they’d cooked, borrowing one another’s utensils and tools, sharing news and gossip alike.

It was in this spirit that Chae Bui, the round-cheeked woman, wife of Comrade Keng, came to visit us one night, bearing a basket of goods—“Gifts to fatten you up,” she said, giggling, as she plopped herself down in front of the kerosene lantern on the floor, her round, bulbous shadow hovering behind her, filling half the room. To my disappointment, her daughter Mui was not with her, but then, I knew it was quite late and she must be asleep. Already in the mosquito net myself, and supposedly asleep, I watched silently as Chae Bui handed Mama a skewer of smoked fish, spiced dried beef, a bag of sticky rice, and a small block of cane sugar. Then she pulled out a packet of cigarettes and, handing it to Big Uncle, said, “American, one percent tobacco, ninety-nine percent imperialism.” Again she giggled, her round tummy jiggling.

Everything about Chae Bui was round and jiggly, leaving the impression that she wasn’t so much a person as a big bubble bouncing happily about. I’d never met a grown-up who bracketed almost everything she said with giggles.

Big Uncle thanked her, looking at the package. “I didn’t know such things still exist . . .”

Chae Bui explained that Comrade Keng had just returned with the
district leader from a trip to a town near the Vietnamese border. “Sometimes things leak through.”

They were silent for a moment, and then Big Uncle asked, “Do you know why we’re still here?”

“Remember that day you arrived, when the district leader had to leave abruptly in the middle of the meeting?”

Both Big Uncle and Mama nodded.

“Well, apparently, the leader of a neighboring district heard about your arrival and demanded that all of you be sent to your intended destination. The district leader refused, arguing why waste time and effort in transferring you to the other side of the country when you’d be just as useful here. The other leader accused him of being lenient and lacking a strong ‘political standpoint’ and threatened to expose him. It was not an outright threat, but this is what was hinted.”

“But we are nobody,” Big Uncle said, brows furrowing. “Why fight over us?”

“It’s not about you. It’s about them. My husband says there is a struggle between those who adhere to the Cause and those who are loyal to the Party. The district leader is probably among the few who still cling to the Cause, ideals that drew them to the Revolution in the first place.”

“It’s all so random.” Big Uncle shook his head. “Like a bunch of boys playing rock-paper-scissors.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Chae Bui offered, “you’re very fortunate that you’ve ended up here. Battambang is a terrible place, where they like to send ‘undesirable’ people, and you were marked as—” She stopped.

“As that,” Mama filled in.
“Undesirable.”

The room became completely quiet, except for Grandmother Queen’s snoring.

•  •  •

After Chae Bui had left, Big Uncle lit a cigarette. He took his first drag, long and slow. Mama walked over, her lips quivering in the wavering blue light of the kerosene lantern. “May I?” she asked, shaking a cigarette out of the packet. He lifted the kerosene lantern to her, touching the blue
flame to the tip of her cigarette, his eyes on her lips as she drew in breath. Then, with her arms crossed and the lit cigarette between her upheld fingers, Mama tilted her head back and blew out the smoke, with an ease that told me this wasn’t the first time.

“It’s funny what a man wants before he dies,” Big Uncle murmured, bending down to put the kerosene lantern back on the floor. He ran his hand down the back of his head, playing with the new stubble. “In those hours I’d thought were my last, all I wanted was a cigarette.” He gave a small ironic laugh.

Mama looked at him but didn’t respond.

He turned from her gaze and kept talking. “The soldiers came one night to our hut. They said I needed to come with them. I asked them why. They got angry. They said I was a member of the CIA. They were young and illiterate, these boys. They didn’t know east from west, let alone know what the CIA was, what those English letters stand for. But this was what they’d been instructed to say. If they want you, and you’ve committed no crime, this is what they’ll accuse you of—working for the CIA. I suppose it’s something you can’t disprove, even if you try.

“I needed to be removed from the family, they told me. Why? I asked, again my anger getting the better of me. What the hell for? They threatened to kill the family right there in front of me. So I went with them, I let them drag me out.”

He paused, taking another long drag. Mama waited quietly, the cigarette still in her hand, but she’d stopped smoking.

“They brought me to a forest, where there were huts and cages and dug-out trenches. A secret prison maybe. A military center of some sort. They were like boys playing war. There, they began my reeducation. They said I needed to purify my mind, purge it of imperialist thoughts. Memory is a sickness, they told me, and I was full of it. I needed to be cured. They took a coconut to my skull . . . There were many who died this way. But they couldn’t crack me. I was too strong, they told one another. Too big to be broken so easily. I must have foreign blood. A pure Khmer couldn’t possibly be this big, this tall. I must be the child of an American whore. They wanted me to confess. Who was my father, my grandfather?
What were their names? When I wouldn’t say, they took bamboo stakes and slashed my scalp. They joked that they were looking for CIA codes, classified information. I told them I had no such things. I had no idea what they were talking about. They said they would find out from the women and children. They were convinced we’d been important people. They said they would go back to the village and bring the whole family, put them in the bamboo cage with me. They laughed, slapping one another on the back for coming up with the idea. So I told them I had foreign blood, I worked for the CIA, anything they wanted to hear, the most ridiculous improbable lies.

“When they thought they’d broken me, I was taken back to the village. The others, I found them. Hanged from the ceiling. Their bodies swollen. Blackened with flies. Tata had told them everything, they said. Our name. We were princes and princesses. One group interrogated me, the others murdered my family. There was never any communication between them. It was all a game.

“Only Mother was spared—too old for them to waste their effort. For days she’d lived with their bodies, and you wonder why she sees only ghosts, talks only to them . . .

“As I’d been reeducated, they let me live. It would’ve been better if they hadn’t. I wanted to hang myself next to my wife and sons. After I buried them, I tied a noose around my own neck and closed my eyes.

“In the darkness of my mind, I saw everyone—the twins’ smiling faces, yours, Raami’s, and Radana’s. Ayuravann’s. Then I saw my own face, I heard my own voice, the promise I’d made to your husband that I would take care of you and the girls. Even as I readied myself to die, I hoped
you
were alive, somehow, somewhere. Then, hope—this thin filament of possibility that somewhere you were fighting to live—took hold of me. I grabbed it and knotted it around my neck. I let it lead me, pull me back to life.

“After that day, I began to ask about you and the girls, describing to people what you looked like, Raami with her polio, and pretty little Radana standing this high. Various descriptions. But no one had seen or heard of you. Then months later a truck was to take some people to
Battambang. I thought then since there was no news of you, perhaps you’d gone that far. I asked to be part of the group. The village folk looked at me as if I was mad.
Do you know where you’re going?
some tried to warn me. I didn’t care. I didn’t have anything to lose. I had only the memories of India and the twins, our family and their horrible deaths.

“The night before the truck was due to leave, I shaved my head. To mourn them. To mourn myself also, my own death, for I’d died that day with them, strangled by the realization I couldn’t—”

His hands shook and he dropped his cigarette to the floor. He bent down to pick it up, but he fell on his knees instead, crushing the cigarette beneath him. He crouched there, arms over his head, and when he spoke again, his voice cracked. “I couldn’t save them. Even with all my lies, I couldn’t save them.” He wept openly.

Mama did not move. She stood watching him, this quaking heap at her feet. She pushed her cigarette hard into the windowsill, grinding it into bits against the wood, before throwing the butt out the window. Then, slowly, she lowered herself to the floor next to him.

Between themselves, I knew, they would never talk about the others again. It was understood that this was the least they could do for the dead—to bury their memories, if not them.

As for myself, I could not sleep. My night was broken up by jarring images of flies, ropes, and faces I could no longer recognize. At one point, I woke, tiptoed to the stairway, and threw up.