The Map of Lost Memories (31 page)

“Why is Irene making the decision?” Simone asked.

“The next time you find a treasure map, you can be the leader,” Marc said.

“You’re absolutely certain there’s no way around Leh?” Irene asked Clothilde, eyeing her simple shift and thin-skinned moccasins with envy. The cuffs of Irene’s own many-pocketed drill shirt were snapped tightly around her wrists, and her collar was snug at her throat. She had tucked her pants into her boots, securing them with straps that made her feel like an overheated Houdini wrapped up for a straitjacket escape. “No other trails in this area?”

“If there were one or two of us, maybe. We could have the coolies clear one of the old hunting paths. But not with the horses and oxcarts,” Clothilde said, indicating the pack of native porters waiting with the lanterns and supply carts.

“And Xa agrees?” Irene nodded toward their guide, a wiry, weathered Cambodian who had planted his torch into a bed of moss on the trail. Although he was at least sixty, he’d brought along his five-year-old son. Both wore the brown sarongs common among highland Cambodians.

“Xa? Xa! He works for Ormond,” Simone said. “Of course he’s going to say there’s no other path. And why are you all so willing to trust
her
?”

Clothilde wisely ignored Simone.

Staring resolutely at the trail ahead, Irene said, “We’re going to Leh.”

“And why should we take that risk?” Louis’s eyes settled on her with disapproval.

Clouds of high-pitched mosquitoes whined around Irene’s face, which was slicked with a protective Chinese ointment. Encased in her body’s own clammy humidity, she resented the need for her oppressive clothing. Such insistent physical distractions were new to her, making it a
struggle to hold on to the scheme she had begun to work on once she realized that Mr. Simms was not going to hand her a solution. When she realized, truly, for the first time, that the outcome of this expedition was up to her. She said, “We’re going to walk into the village and out the other side because we know they won’t stop us.”

“Why do we know that?” Marc was intrigued.

As Irene sorted her thoughts, low brush crackled to their right, a reminder of the lethal vipers it sheltered. The matte brown Sekong River was deceptively hushed to their left, its stagnant pools a hazard of leeches, Siamese crocodiles, and dengue fever. She watched Xa’s son, Kiri, playing a one-sided game of tag with the gibbon that was his pet. He needed only a coating of saffron paste as defense against the deadly mosquitoes, while her ears were ringing from the quinine tablets she had taken in Stung Treng. “Because we’ve been sent by Ormond,” she said.

“What do you have in mind?” Louis asked, his censure relenting.

The mosquitoes were crawling into the eyelets of Irene’s boots and somehow even managing to get inside her shirt. They were absolutely maddening, but she still felt the old thrill making its way back to her. A thrill that had once been a part of her everyday life, as she found a way to achieve what others had not. Marc, Louis, Simone—none of them had a plan. She had a plan.

“We’re going to tell the villagers that Commissaire Ormond has been informed that the colonial government will be sending a mission to the northeast provinces,” she announced. “There is to be a formal mapping. Not an inch of this region will go unexplored. He’s done his best to keep the area autonomous, but there’s nothing he can do about this. Soldiers will accompany the surveyors to put down any local resistance. New administrative outposts will be established. They will find the temple, since there’s no way to keep something like that hidden, but Ormond wants to save the history. If the villagers of Leh will help him with this, he will save them too.”

Fascinated, as if what Irene was saying was true, Simone asked, “From what?”

“The same thing that empires have wanted from their so-called savages for centuries. The French are building roads and factories in the lowlands,
and what’s the one thing they need?” She glanced at Clothilde, whose sidebar on the historic relationship between the Brau and Khmer had given her the final bolt she needed to secure her idea into place. “Cheap labor. Essentially, slaves. We will tell them that Ormond will keep them from being taken as slaves.”

Through the remainder of the night, on the just-wide-enough, northeast-bound trail that traveled from Stung Treng to Siem Pang near the Lao border, the expedition continued toward Leh, which Clothilde estimated they could reach as early as the following evening if they kept up their pace. They walked steadily on the rutted path, accompanied by eight coolies, six horses, and two oxen dragging carts carrying food and supplies. The dirt trail had been tamped down over the years by the callused bare feet of boar hunters and dry rice farmers, and as the sun came up, Irene saw that it was framed not in lush foliage, as she had expected, but in a low, tattered forest and the occasional thicket of purple thistle. Her leg muscles were already sore from the strain of walking on soggy ground in heavy-soled boots, and she wondered how the others were feeling. So far, no one had complained, not even Simone, who looked as if she was going to faint most of the time.

In the sympathetic air of the daybreak hour, they stopped in a sheltered clearing for breakfast. Through ribbons of chiffon light, wiry apes scrambled out of the sparse scrub and ran down to the river to scold the horses drinking in the shallows. Bouncing on Simone’s shoulders, Kiri’s gibbon—May-ling, Simone had named it, after the wife of Chiang Kaishek—chattered at her fellow beasts. The cook served warm porridge lumpy with tinned peaches, while they all sat on a tarp spread out above the riverbank and talked through their plan, which they agreed was as solid as they could hope for, given the circumstances, with one exception.

“There’s no reason for him to believe us,” Louis said to Clothilde, speaking of Xa, who was squatting at the river’s edge, smoking one of the Gauloises that were part of his salary as he watched his son digging in the sandbank. His graying hair was pulled into a knot at the nape of his neck, and his back was adorned with a tattoo of two snakes, fangs bared, looking
as if they had crawled out of the jungle to writhe up his spine. Little did he know, he was about to hear the story that would be presented to the chief of Leh: The “French chiefs” planned to take over northeast Cambodia, and Commissaire Ormond’s benevolent leadership was coming to its end. “Ormond is the one who sent Xa to watch us,” Louis added. “Why wouldn’t he have told Xa about this himself? And what’s to stop Xa from running straight back to tell Ormond what we’re doing? I think we should leave him out of this.”

A phantom breeze sounded like rushing water in the tops of sugar palm trees. Gazing beyond Xa at the slow-moving river, Irene said, “We can’t pull this off without him. If he’s not a part of it, the chief will never believe us.”

Because they had decided to show deference by following local custom, the women would not participate in the meeting with the chief. Instead, it made sense for Xa to take the lead. Since Xa did not speak English or French, translation would take place through the chief’s eldest son, who Clothilde had learned was one of the students of a short-lived program in which the French had taken a boy from each village to “civilize” him in Phnom Penh, then had sent him back to train the rest. Still reluctant, Louis said, “I’ve worked with these people all of my life. Xa doesn’t know us. He has no reason to trust us. I don’t see how we can convince him.”

“Any ideas?” Marc asked the others, as he refilled tin cups with a second round of tea.

With her hair in tangles and her arms scored with scratches, Simone appeared wasted by their long walk. Even food and drink had not revived her, and her drooping carriage did nothing to alleviate the impression that she would not have the stamina for three or four more nights on the trail. Scowling down, her attention focused on a red ant marching across the tarp, she said, “Yes, Clothilde, any ideas? Why do I have a feeling that you might have some suggestions about how to use Xa after all that chatting you and he were doing on the trail last night?”

Beside Simone, Clothilde sat with her legs folded up to her chest. Wrapping her arms around her shins, she rested her chin on her bare
knees. She thought for a moment before saying, “Like every man, Xa has a vulnerable spot.”

“Which is?” Marc asked, amused.

“Kiri is Xa’s only son. A late-in-life miracle from a now dead wife. Whenever it’s among your choices,” she declared, with a coolness that was impressive, if not a bit disturbing, “always choose the child. A parent will do anything for his child.”

They all stared at Kiri, whose skin was still scruffy with saffron paste. Both he and his father were staring into the air, studying something the others could not see.

Clothilde said, “We should talk to Xa as soon as possible. He will need some time to think about our story, to understand the benefits of accepting it as true.”

Kiri’s giggle scampered up the riverbank, and Irene’s thoughts swam from Marc to Simone to Mr. Simms—the damage each had suffered from the loss of a child. She spoke not from reflection but from reflex, surprising herself with her vehemence. “I don’t want to use the boy.”

“So that’s your line?” Simone asked, looking up.

“What do you mean?” Irene asked.

“The line you won’t cross. We can shoot back. We can threaten the villagers with the fear of slavery. But we can’t threaten Xa with—”

“Nothing that’s not real,” Clothilde interrupted, in the placating tone Irene had heard her use with Mr. Simms.

“Real?” Irene shook her head. “What real threats could there be to his son?”

“Actually,” Louis said, “it’s unfortunate, but the threats to a boy like Kiri are plenty, with or without us. For example, the government could start rounding up native children for their experimental programs again. Have any of you heard about what’s going on in Kep? There are rumors of medical testing. Doctors are infecting locals with viruses and trying various cures. It’s shameful.”

“And still no one wants my revolution,” Simone muttered with disdain, as she crushed the red ant now crawling across her ankle.

From the shore, Kiri screamed in delight, dancing from one foot to the
other as he stared at the leathered mitt of his father’s hand. On it was balanced an enormous butterfly, its wings spotted turquoise, emerald, and black, lustrous as peacock feathers.

“Besides, we’re not going to threaten anyone,” Clothilde said, standing and slipping one foot and then the other into her moccasins. “All we need to do is plant a seed of doubt. Let him know what
could
happen if our story about a French takeover of the region does turn out to be true. Then we simply assure Xa that no matter what happens, his son will be taken care of.”

Above, sunlight moved through a lattice of knobby branches, reminding Irene that the morning was passing quickly. She could feel the rinds of dirt embedded beneath her clipped fingernails, the dried sweat crusted at the base of her spine, and she longed to strip off her dirty clothing and bathe in the river. But there was no time for that. They had to keep moving, to get in a few more hours before the heat became unbearable. Confused by the resistance she felt to Clothilde’s idea, she got to her feet and said, “I don’t know, if you really think this is the best way to go about it …”

No one spoke, and the decision was made.

The men stood. Marc held out his hand to help Simone up, and as she gripped it, she said, “If you’re feeling shabby about doing this, Irene, don’t bother. One of these days you’ll see that you’re no better than the rest of us when it comes to compromising principles.”

“What happened at breakfast? What was that all about?” Marc asked, when he and Irene had a chance to step away from the others. “Are you all right?”

“The way it washed over me, it was so strange.”

“What?”

Irene watched the coolies setting up a shelter for the hammocks. The expedition had stopped once again, this time for the day’s rest, and everyone would try to sleep until right before sundown, gathering new energy from the cool brought on by the rain. “Guilt,” she said.

Concerned, he asked, “Are you having second thoughts about taking the scrolls?”

“No, it’s not about that.” She arched her shoulders and stretched her arms toward the treetops, but she could not loosen her sore muscles. As she shifted her weight, her feet oozed inside her boots, and she could feel her neck and wrists, chafed from the constant rubbing of damp fabric against her skin. “I outmaneuver people, Marc. That’s what I know how to do. It’s what I love to do—with collectors, dealers, men who would deceive me as happily as I’d deceive them. I was ready for the colonial government. I was even looking forward to opponents like Ormond and the ferocious Cambodian tribesmen,” she said with a dry laugh. “But Xa and his son. An old man and a little boy. Listening to them laughing over a butterfly while we sat there plotting how we could use them.” The viscous air made her feel as if she was drowning. She blinked back the sweat burning into her eyes. “I’ve never felt that kind of guilt before, at least not when I’m pursuing something I want. Why now? Why them?”

“The minute we walked into this jungle, we walked out of our known worlds.” To emphasize his point, Marc raised his head, and her eyes followed his upward. Woven into the lianas, at least ten feet wide, a frayed web caught prisms of glinting sunlight.

As she stood looking up at the spider in the center of the web, its body as big and fat as a fist, Marc smoothed back the loose hair clinging to her forehead. It was the first time he had touched her with such intimacy since they had entered the jungle, and she leaned toward the comfort of his hand as he said, “There are probably going to be more times like this morning when you won’t recognize your reactions, and for people like us, who do what we do, that might not be a bad thing. However capable I was in my job, or you were in yours, there were feelings we had to keep at bay to make sure we succeeded. Guilt was certainly one of them. Compassion, another.

“I can’t say for certain, I don’t know you well enough, Irene, I can only speak for what I know about myself, but maybe you’re tired of having to harden your heart to get what you want. Maybe you’re finally afraid there will come a day when you’ll go too far.”