In the Shadow of the Banyan

by Vaddey Ratner

A rainbow gliding through a field of flowers . . . Again a line fluttered through my mind. Though I was no poet, I was the daughter of one and often saw the world through my father’s words.

“Be careful,” Mama said from across the table as she unfolded her napkin and laid it across her lap. “You don’t want to burn your tongue.” She smiled. I stared at her, mesmerized. Maybe I had seen a New Year’s tevoda after all. “I thought I’d visit the temple in Toul Tumpong after breakfast,” she said. “My sister will send her chauffeur. I’ll go with her, so our car is free if you’d like to venture out.” She was speaking to Papa.

Mama put down her fork gently, trying not to show her exasperation. I knew, though, what she was thinking—Couldn’t we talk about something else? But being the sister-in-law, and a commoner among royals, she couldn’t speak out of turn, tell Tata what to say or not to say, choose the topic of a conversation.

interested in the next life. Anything to do with this one was a huge void to her. I wondered if she even knew there was a war. “People are fighting . . .” “Yes, I know,” she murmured. “There will remain only so many of us as rest in the shadow of a banyan tree . . .”

“Oh.” To mourn then, I thought, is to feel your own nothingness.

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT YOUR HOMES AND BELONGINGS! JUST GO! GO! THE ORGANIZATION WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU!” I prayed to the Organization.

I paid close attention, expecting him to weave me a tale of the Underwater Kingdom where the mythical naga serpents lived. “Then near the end of the rainy season, the level of the Mekong begins to fall and the built-up water of the Tonle Sap Lake drains back into the Tonle Sap River, reversing its course.”

I stopped eating. Mama noticed. “Don’t you want to have some more food?” she asked, worried by my abrupt change of appetite. I shook my head. I felt sick to my stomach.

Except for Mama, all of us had had servants our whole lives, and suddenly we were simultaneously without help and home.

His gaze traveled up to the words at the top, Knowing comes from . . . He put the rag down and, with a piece of chalk from the pile of swept-up rubbish, finished the sentence, so that now it read, Knowing comes from learning, finding from seeking.

If one glimpses heaven’s reflection on earth, then somewhere must exist the real thing.”

You see, Raami, as beautiful as this temple is, it’s only a tiny, modest glimpse of what is divinely possible in all of us. We are capable of extraordinary beauty if we dare to dream.”

Papa left my side and hurried down the steps. “Here, let me help you,” he said, offering the old sweeper his arm. “Thank you, Neak Ang Mechas,” the sweeper said, using Papa’s full title, which meant he knew who Papa was. But how? On a few occasions during our journey people had turned to stare upon hearing us speak in the royal language. Papa had suggested that we should speak in normal Khmer as much as possible so as not to draw attention to ourselves.

Knowing comes from learning, finding from seeking. It was clear what the message meant. If I looked hard enough, if I sought, I would find what I was looking for. Here, on the banyan-shaded ground, the temple harbored minute reflections of the paradise we’d left behind.

It was clear to me now that while books could be torn and burned, the stories they held needn’t be lost or forgotten.

Milk Mother said that stories are like footpaths of the gods. They lead us back and forth across time and space and connect us to the entire universe, to people and beings we never see but who we feel exist.

“Yes,” Big Uncle echoed, nodding, as if seeing it all clearly, “they keep us fearful and helpless by destroying our most basic sense of security—separating us from family and preventing any connections from being formed. All the more reason to stick together.”

“The problem with being seven—I remember myself at that age—is that you’re aware of so much, and yet you understand so little. So you imagine the worst.”

I wondered at what age one understands everything.

“They’re certainly a more educated bunch,” she said, looking around for support. “Well, at least the one who spoke—he wore glasses, didn’t he?” Big Uncle looked at her as if this last statement was as inane as the Revolutionary soldiers’ justification to shoot someone for the very same reason.

“It isn’t your fault.” Know what? What didn’t I know? What wasn’t my fault?

It was just a name, I thought, no more meaningful than the nonsensical appellation the Kamaphibal had concocted for themselves, and, as far as Papa was concerned, I didn’t care what name or title he answered to. Sisowath, Ayuravann, the Tiger Prince, His Highness . . . Even if he were to bear a hundred more names, he would still be my father, and there was no one, neither prince nor god, gentler than he.

Maybe I did, I wanted to tell him. I do now. I certainly understood what it felt like to want to do more than you could.

It was clear the old sweeper was a version of Sambath, and just as I saw a manifestation of my father in everything that was noble and good, he saw a manifestation of his friend everywhere, in every poverty-stricken person he met, and tried to do for each what he hadn’t been able to do for his friend.

Without his saffron robe he seemed naked, vulnerable, stripped of the invincibility I’d always thought monks possessed.

“I told you stories to give you wings, Raami, so that you would never be trapped by anything—your name, your title, the limits of your body, this world’s suffering.”

I didn’t know so much sadness could exist in so small a place.

“You shouldn’t be scared of lightning and thunder,” he said, once we were on dry ground again. “They’re just two children playing with magic.”

Mama had untied the other bundle, on top of which lay Papa’s leather pocket notebook, his silver fountain pen, and the Omega Constellation watch—all loosely wrapped in one of the embroidered white handkerchiefs he used to carry in his pants pocket. He had prepared the bundle himself but must’ve decided at the last minute he wouldn’t need it. Now, here it was—a funeral pyre of his personal effects.

joy and sorrow often travel the same road and sometimes, whether by grace or misfortune, they meet and become each other’s companion.

“Maybe we were supposed to meet,” I said, sensing the possibility of my father everywhere. We are all echoes of one another, Raami. Pok looked at me. Silence seemed to have overtaken him again. Then his face broke open like the morning sun.

“It’s wonderful, all this exploring. But don’t get lost. Remember who you are.” A warning or a plea, I wasn’t sure.

It was clear what she was trying to say—Pok reminded her of her father, and it was all right for me to venture about with him.

“The estate, as we all know, once belonged to a rich landowner. But now, among these remnants of wealth amassed through greed, the spoils of feudalism, we shall build a cooperative of collective wealth.”

Under the Organization’s rules, we were not allowed to celebrate any religious holiday, but Mae said we would honor it anyway. Knowing that my birthday preceded it, I realized I must have turned eight.

She dyed her clothes muted colors, hid her long hair under a kroma, and spoke the village vernacular, sometimes going as far as affecting the lilts and twangs of the rural accent. Her transformation was like the reverse metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a caterpillar.

Your grandmother said black teeth were a mark of beauty in ancient times. Now I know why. The stain seals your teeth, keeps them from rotting out when you don’t have any toothpaste or a proper toothbrush.” Then, without looking up at me, she added, “You mustn’t think this is our life, Raami. This isn’t who we are. We’re more.”

“I’m sorry!” I cried as the coconut spine lacerated my shoulder. “I’m sorry I let them take him away!” She stopped, as if stunned by my words. She threw the whip away, fell to her knees, and broke. Like a beautiful and fragile dream she broke, and everything broke with her.

Radana died because of me. The certainty of it overwhelmed me now, as I remembered all those times I had wished she too would have polio so that we would be the same. Now she was dead. I hadn’t loved her as completely as I myself had been loved, and even though I’d vowed I would, it was too late. Death had already dug a hole in the ground and set its trap.

We headed into a forest, the path in front of us dimly lit by the kerosene lantern. Mama handed me Radana’s pillow. I hugged it for warmth and put my head down on her lap. Sleep, baby, sleep, I sang silently to myself. It’s not morning yet . . . The forest enclosed us.

“The two provinces are in opposite directions!” “True, but at least we’re following orders.” “Even if it’s the wrong ones?” “Yes.”

A squawk from somewhere above me interrupted my wandering. I tilted my head back, expecting to see a crow. Instead, high in the clear white sky, a vulture was circling above a lone palm tree several yards away at the dike junction. I thought of Pok and how he had said that vultures could smell death long before it happened. I thought of Radana and the vultures that circled Pok and Mae’s crisscrossed palms. I wondered who this vulture was coming for now. Me?

At the villa, a young woman—herself gravely ill but assigned to look after my grandmother during my absence—said she could no longer get Grandmother Queen to eat. “She just lies there. Still as a cor—” Corpse, she was about to say, but caught herself in time.

All along I’d expected her death, but that she had died this way—without the comfort of her children—made me rage against her demise, against those who’d prolonged her suffering.

I put my cup out for more water. Big Uncle refilled it. A warm breeze blew, rustling the leaves above us. Big Uncle looked up and said, “There will remain only so many of us as rest in the shadow of a banyan.” “A prophecy, I know.” The prophecy, Papa had explained that day long ago when Om Bao went missing, said a darkness would settle upon Cambodia.

There was only this burial ground, and we would all die here, in our communal grave.

We found him one afternoon. In Men’s Hut Number 5. Big Uncle had hanged himself. With the rope he’d woven with his own hands. He’d lost the will to live, the soldiers said. It wasn’t so. His will was broken. He killed himself, they said. But I knew they’d killed him long before.

For all the loss and tragedy I have known, my life has taught me that the human spirit, like the lifted hands of the blind, will rise above chaos and destruction, as wings in flight.