The Map of Lost Memories (25 page)

Irene waited on a wooden bench in a well of shade, where she watched sunlight crawl across the red-tile roof, lifting a vaporous film from the air. Pillars showed their sharp angles, and as morning levered the sun farther into the sky, light billowed around pedestals scattered like pilings in a shallow stone sea. It rose like a tide over the bare feet of Vishnu, easing up his polished calves to the smooth hem of his
sampot
. Simone’s yellow dress seemed to glow when she arrived from the entry hall, clutching the note Irene had slipped under her hotel room door. The paper said only “Musée Albert Sarraut.”

Too tired to accuse, Irene simply asked, “You still want a revolution, don’t you?”

“You should know that I’m through with the Communists,” Simone announced rapidly, as if she too had been up all night and still did not know how to begin. “They’re as bad as the colonial government. Everything is politics to them. Everything is about power. About who has the power. Not only over the country but within the party too. Roger spent as much time battling Voitinsky as he did the Municipal Government.”

“If this isn’t about Communism, then I don’t understand what happened last night.”

Making her way through the statues, Simone stopped to lay the back of her hand against the cool cheek of the goddess Lakshmi. “I’ve never cared about power, but I’ve always cared about Cambodia, even when I was a girl, even before I met Roger and understood what my feelings could accomplish. After I came back from my first trip to France, I would think about the architecture here, the wrought-iron balconies and forest green shutters, and I could never figure it out. Why would a person come this far and then make every effort to feel as if he had never left Marseilles?
What purpose could there be in taking a ship halfway around the globe only to eat crème brûlée in a café where the tables were covered in bobbin lace from Normandy? The French have done a remarkable job of paving their culture right over the top of the Khmer’s.”

Irene could not remember if Simone had always talked like this.
The French. Their culture
. As if she belonged to an entirely different nationality. Despite how Irene felt about the way colonialism was stifling the Cambodians, she said, “They’re restoring temples. Surely there’s value in that.”

Tracing her finger along the engraved braid that framed Lakshmi’s high brow, Simone said, “I’m not talking about their pretentious efforts at archaeology to bolster the soiled reputation of the French Empire. I’m talking about the present day. Give them another generation of
mission civilisatrice
, and any last trace of Khmer culture will be erased. All that will be left is this museum and an amusement park called Angkor Wat with one of your Coney Island roller coasters swooping over the lotus ponds.”

“And how do you think the scrolls can change that?”

“Shouldn’t the Cambodians be the ones to decide what kind of life they’re going to live? What kind of future their country will have?” Simone tipped her head in thought, and it was as if she were consulting the sculpted goddess beside her rather than Irene when she asked, “Shouldn’t they be the ones to choose if they’re going to replace
amok
with bouillabaisse?
Sampots
with Brooks Brothers suits? Shouldn’t their history—their own history—belong to them, to do with as they please?”

“And what is that?”

“Start a nationalist party and take their country back.”

It was such an unprotected, unrepentant statement; Irene had to force herself to hold Simone’s gaze. She felt an immediate shame that any of this came as a surprise. She thought about everything Simone had told her in Shanghai: how she had organized arms shipments with the gunrunner Borodin, and had helped found the workers’
Shanghai Chronicle
, and was the confidante of the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, but mostly her declaration, “I am valuable.” In retrospect, Irene could too easily see that this had not been said to soothe Simone’s wounded ego. Searching for something
to say that might encourage answers without provoking Simone, Irene said, “I had such idealistic ideas about what I was going to find over here, what I would discover about the Cambodians that no one else had. I didn’t realize how inadequate a decade of study could be compared to a single day in the streets.”

“That’s exactly it, Irene. The Cambodians are more than they’re given credit for. They care about traditions, and they’re willing to work hard to feed their children. How different is that from any of the Europeans over here? But there’s no point in hard work, since everything they earn is taken away from them. The government sees them as nothing but the labor they provide the rubber plantations. The colonials are doing everything they can to drain the Cambodians of any last excellence they might have in them. It’s because they know. Given a pittance of their old superiority, the first thing the Cambodians would do is kick the French out of their country.”

Irene stood. “You still haven’t explained how the scrolls fit into any of this.”

Simone crossed her arms. “And you still haven’t explained how Lawrence Fear and my mother fit in.”

Again, this reference to her mother. And what could Lawrence Fear possibly have to do with anything? “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Irene said.

“You’re honestly telling me that you don’t know about Madeleine and Sarah and their great Cambodian adventure?”

Irene’s eyes jumped from Simone to the impassive statue beside her to the red hibiscus flickering in the cloud shadows of the courtyard—trying to comprehend. Why had Simone Merlin, hell-bent on taking the scrolls to start a nationalist party, just said
Sarah
, Irene’s mother’s name?

“Oh,” Simone gasped. “You really don’t know, do you?”

Irene shook her head.

“Fear. It’s a name you’ve never forgotten. Well, I can’t forget it either, although I didn’t know it was a name until last night. When my mother died, I found a letter among her belongings, from a woman named Sarah in America. Do you remember how it was when your mother died? How you gathered everything you could? The memory of her perfume. The
way she kissed your forehead when she put you to bed. Her smile. You fought to keep her alive.”

“I remember.”

“I memorized this.” Simone unfolded a worn sheet of paper, glanced at it, and then recited from memory.
“My dearest Madeleine. I have learned of the tragic loss of your son. I am so sorry. Some days the thought of what might have happened to my unborn daughter is too much to bear, and I cannot fathom the pain you are now suffering. There is no greater loss than that of a child. I will never be able to thank you enough for helping to save us from Fear in Manila.”

Irene tried to shut out the scratching noise of the bats in the rafters, but as Simone held out the letter, their shuffling grew louder. She noticed Simone’s nails, bitten down to the raw red quick. Her body did not know what to do, tense or wilt, as she recognized her mother’s handwriting on the same oyster-colored stationery she had used for all of her correspondence, even notes left for the milkman or tucked into Irene’s lunch pail.

Simone said, “I remember thinking that it was such a strange thing to write.
For helping to save us from Fear
. Especially since
Fear
was capitalized. Do you see how it’s capitalized? I thought that was a mistake.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t.
I will always treasure our great adventure in Cambodia. I cannot know why you agreed to keep the secret, but I know why I did, and I am not sorry. I hope you still feel the same. Patrik sends his love, as do I. Your devoted friend, Sarah
. Do you see the date, Irene? 1897. This was written two years before my parents were married.” She scanned the letter, as if searching for hidden answers. “I’ve never understood it, Irene. My mother never told me about having a son who died.”

“I was told that Mr. Simms saved our lives. He’s the one who killed Fear. How could your mother have saved us? What could she have done?”

Simone thought this over. “She served as a nurse during the Franco-Chinoise War. She was at the hospital night and day during the uprisings in Siem Reap. You said your mother was shot. Mine could have treated the wound.”

“What would she have been doing in Manila?”

“The same thing your parents were doing. Traveling,” Simone speculated. “Exploring new places. It’s not an unrealistic thought, Irene. Do you understand what this could mean? If my mother was in Manila, if she was with them for some reason, and if she helped your mother, then she must have known Henry Simms. If you’re right, what you said last night, if your father had Reverend Garland’s diary before you were born—”

“I don’t know if that’s true.” In the bright daylight, without the urging of a storm, Irene was reluctant to jump to this conclusion.

“But if it is. If it is!” Whatever politics Simone believed in, whatever larger-than-life hopes she had for the revival of the Khmer Empire, they were forgotten for an instant as she said, excitedly, “A great Cambodian adventure. Irene, promise me that you’ll tell me if you find out what that means.”

“A Cambodian nationalist party?” Marc whistled. “Did she tell you how she plans on doing this?”

Irene stood inside the closed door of their hotel room. The yellowing glass lamps were not turned on, as if dimness could equal coolness. It couldn’t. She peeled off her blouse, but her camisole was still too warm for the sticky late-morning heat. “We didn’t make it that far. We were interrupted by the discovery that our mothers might have had some kind of Cambodian adventure together. A
great
Cambodian adventure. Possibly with your father. Possibly having to do with the diary.”

Marc pushed away from the mahogany desk, where he had been reading through the small collection of books about the Khmer that Irene had brought with her. Around the books and tucked into them, his notes were scribbled on letter paper provided by the hotel. “I didn’t know your families knew one another.”

“Like everything else, neither did I.” She unlatched the tall slatted doors that opened onto the balcony. A downy rain had started as she was walking back from the museum, and the rattan furniture outside was slick with a fine mist, despite the awning above. She retrieved her packet of cigarettes from where she had tucked it into a pot of withering marigolds.

Marc said, “I know it doesn’t make sense, but do you think there’s any way Henry could have something to do with this nationalist party of hers?”

“At this point anything is likely, but I don’t think so. My guess now is that Simone is part of this expedition because of some relationship Mr. Simms had with her mother. Something happened over here, before we were born, presumably to do with the temple we’re after. It could be why he wanted me to get her out of Shanghai.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell you that?”

“I’m not sure. He’s always been a manipulator. I just didn’t see any of this coming because he’s never manipulated me.” Irene should have been angered. Instead she felt honored, at being at the heart of this mechanism Mr. Simms had set in motion. “As for Simone’s politics, I have a feeling that they’re an unlucky coincidence. It all seems to be tangled together because we’re all tangled together.” Tipping ashes onto the dead moths in the flowerpot, she sighed. “A revolution to call her own. Who would have guessed that
that’s
what she really wants from this? I still can’t quite believe it.”

Marc joined Irene on the balcony. Leaning against the railing, they looked down at the French tricolors hanging damp and limp from iron posts dotted along the riverfront promenade on the opposite side of the wide Quai Lagrandiere boulevard. “If it makes you feel any better, I was Shanghai’s watchdog, and I didn’t know Simone was planning anything.”

The worst part of this for Irene was that she knew the exact cause of her blindness. “Simone told me what I needed to know to see this coming, and I didn’t listen because I wanted to hear something else. I wanted someone who understood me. Who desired what I desired. I felt unmoored after everything that happened in Seattle.” She traced his shoulder, searching for direction as her finger circled the compass that showed beneath the cotton of his white shirt. “I thought that once we found the scrolls, we could reach some kind of compromise. I thought she was homesick and defeated. I felt sorry for her. I thought I was saving her. But Marc, she killed her husband. She saved
me
that night. It’s unforgivable, how wrong I allowed myself to be about her.”

“You weren’t wrong. She does share your desire. Both of you plan to use the scrolls to fulfill a dream. The problem is that you have such different dreams.” He caught her hand and stilled it, and while she was comforted by his closeness, it unsettled her too. He asked, “What are you going to do now?”

“She does love her sedatives. Maybe I can drug her and make a run for it.”

He nodded appreciatively. “Good girl. Never lose your sense of humor, especially here in the gallows.”

“If I could figure out her reasons for thinking it will do any good to hand the scrolls over to the Cambodians, if I could understand how the scrolls can make a difference in what the revolutionaries are trying to accomplish, then I’d have a better chance of knowing if there’s any validity in what she wants to do. Of knowing what I’m truly up against.”

Marc was thoughtful as he looked out at the leather brown Tonle Sap River. Although the day was well under way, there was no commerce on the docks, only vacant fishing boats and a Cambodian boy sprawled in a canoe. Finally, he said, “When Angkorian society began, Paris and London were not much more than elaborate villages. Europe was crawling with barbarians, and here were the Khmer engineering sophisticated irrigation systems and constructing the biggest temple in the world. I didn’t know about any of this until I started reading.” He waved inside, at the books on the desk. “I’ve lived in the Orient all my life, I’ve lived under a colonial government all my life, and I’ve never questioned one empire usurping another. It’s the way of the world. But when we were walking through Angkor Wat, I found myself wondering about what is lost when one culture is systematically annihilated so another can thrive in the name of progress. Think about it, what might have happened if Cambodia hadn’t eventually been taken over by Siam and then France—what the Cambodians could offer the world if they’re given the opportunity to follow through with what they’re meant to become.”