Geoff Ryman - The King’s Last Song

‘Because,’ says his boss, looking at him seriously. ‘It makes it sound like you’re shit too.’

‘You are what you eat,’ says Map and grins like a corpse.

Map is bicycling alone into Siem Reap.

The Patrimony Police don’t have enough money for motorcycles. They keep their men occupied by training. Every day, the Patrimony Police cycle all around the Western Baray or up the main hill of Phnom Bakeng.

Map always has to be the first. He boasts that he can cycle as fast as any motorbike. He certainly can cycle faster than his captain or any of the younger guys. He is the oldest man on the force. He says: from the neck up, there’s a face that should have had grown-up sons to work for me. From the neck down, I am my own sons. I have no sons, so my legs are sons for me.

He cycles now with his eyes fixed on the moon. He thinks of the famous stone portrait of Jayavarman. The stone face is white too, and it also glows, with wisdom and love. The face of the moon is the face of the King.

So what is all this about, Great King? How come someone with as many good actions as Ta Barang gets taken by pirates? Explain to me how that can be justice. Tell me how there can be any justice.

There are whole fields of angry spirits, Jayavarman. Am I the only guy who can see them? I see their hands coming out of the ground, all prickly like thistles. All around here, in the ditches, are bones and mud that used to be people. You can put out your tables of food at New Year and Pchum Ben, but these ghosts don’t want rice cakes. They want me, Jayavarman, because of what I did. So I just keep laying them down. All those ghosts. The grass in Cambodia is ghosts, the termite nests swarm with them.

And no one remembers. No one talks. They don’t want to harm the children by telling the truth. They think the truth is dust that can be raised. The truth is teeth in the air. The truth bites. Truth is thicker around us than mosquitoes.

I know who stole the Golden Book. At New Year? It’s us again, isn’t it, Jayavarman? It’s the Khmers Rouges, Angka . We’ve come back like all those vengeful spirits that don’t want to be forgotten. Just when they thought they’d paved us over, built a hotel on top of us, and made themselves rich, we jump up and take their strong man, and the barang who wants to help us. Like the spirits, we come back not because we think we can win. We just want to make this world hell. Like the one we live in.

The road is absolutely dark and still. On the last night of New Year. No one’s travelling. They’re all scared again, scared in their souls, scared all the way back to the war. Two gunshots and they’re like birds flying in panic.

We are so easily knocked down, Jayavarman. We try and try, we work so hard. We maintain our kindnesses. We smile, and help each other, and make life possible for each other. We perform our acts of merit and still our luck doesn’t change.

Acts of merit don’t work, Jayavarman.

They didn’t work for Ta Barang, they don’t work for those guides on the stone steps. So I don’t do them, Jaya. I don’t do good actions. Good actions don’t get you anything; good actions have no power. Nothing seems to have any power.

Why doesn’t anything change? Why am I stuck on a bicycle? Why are my friends not teaching college instead of swatting flies in the dark? Why do our children give up being smart?

Map imitates the children aloud to the moon. He says in English, in a child’s voice, ‘Sir, you buy cold drink, Sir? Something to eat, Sir?’

Map wants to weep for his people and their children. They wait all day in the sun to sell the beautiful cloth that is spun on bicycle wheels by people with no legs. They get up at 4.00 a.m. to buy tins of coke and bottles of water and they carry the ice four kilometres and they are six years old. ‘If you buy cold drink later, you buy from me. Promise, Sir?’

Instead of going to school.

Jayavarman answers, in the person of the moon.

Because , the moon says in a soft voice. That is the only reason. Just because. You must work very hard now to catch up .

Yeah, everybody’s ahead of us, not just the Americans, but even the Thais. The Thais come here in air-conditioned coaches and won’t use the toilets because they are too dirty. They cannot believe we ever built this city or gave them their royal language. The Vietnamese are way ahead of us, making their own motorcycles for profit.

Moonlight reflects on the paved, smooth road as if it were water. The moon on the empty road speaks again.

So. Cycle. Cycle hard, cycle fast, cycle all the way into your old age. The world won’t notice .

Work. Work without success. Grind and sweat and cheat with no merit. You are starting from the bottom. You are the lowest in the world.

Because .

‘Because,’ repeats Map.

Excuse me, King. But I know who I am.

I am a smart guy. I am a brave guy. I am a scary guy. I have power inside me, Jayavarman Chantrea , Jayavarman Moonlight. I could be anyone. I could be Hun Sen himself. So Because is why I am cycling on this road alone? Just Because? Is that all?

The moon inclines his sympathetic head. No. You are cycling to rescue Ta Barang .

Yeah, I guess I am.

The moon says, Under all the bragging, you are a respectable man, Tan Sopheaktea . Sopheaktea is Map’s real name, cruelly inappropriate. It means Gentle Face.

‘But I killed children.’

The moon purses its lips. You killed children .

Everything in Sivutha Street is dark.Even the whorehouse bar is closed.

The gates of the Phimeanakas Guesthouse stand locked and the forecourt lights are off.

Map knows Prak, the Phimeanakas security guard. Like Map, Prak stays awake all night under mosquito nets. Like all of Mrs Bou’s staff, Prak is an honest man, meaning he doesn’t steal and tells only harmless lies. Whether he is a good man is another matter. Map has known Prak in other lives, as war followed war.

‘Prak! Prak!’ he hisses.

Map peers into the courtyard that is criss-crossed with the shadows of tall fencing and palm leaves. ‘Prak?’

Somewhere in shadow Prak says, ‘Go away, gunman.’

‘Prak, this is the policeman, Tan Map. What has happened to Teacher Luc Andrade?’

‘I don’t know, come back tomorrow.’

‘Prak, they say he was taken hostage. Do you have any news, do you know anything?’

‘What do you mean? I don’t know anything about it. Go away!’

‘What are Teacher Luc’s team doing? Prak, don’t be stupid, I’m no thief. The Frenchman is my patron, come on! What are the Army doing?’

‘Mrs Bou remembers you, she knows who you are and what you did.’

‘I remember too, everybody remembers what everybody else did. Everybody did something to stay alive. So did you.’

‘I am not coming out. I am coming nowhere near that gate.’

‘What are people saying about what happened?’

‘I am not telling the whole street!’

This is getting weird. ‘Prak, have you seen a ghost or something? I just want to know about my sponsor.’

‘I don’t know anything. The Army came and talked to the guests and left. I didn’t hear what they said; it was none of my business. Now go away!’

Something clicks, a shutter closing.

Prak was always roostershit; his pants were always full of it.

OK, Teacher Luc, I am committed to helping you so I must think very hard about what to do.

The Patrimony Police didn’t know the Book was being moved, and neither did APSARA, at least the guides didn’t know and nobody from APSARA was in the car. So the Army would have been in charge.

Map smiles to himself. No gun. He only has a knife. He giggles. Stay out of trouble, Map. Me?