The Map of Lost Memories (36 page)

“As you should have. I hope you know I don’t fault you for not trusting me. I still find it surprising that you didn’t leave me behind. I wouldn’t have been as persistent if I were dealing with someone like me.”

Once again, Simone sounded uncharacteristically reasonable, and Irene scrutinized her. Her hair was caked with mud, her bandage streaked with dirt, and her trousers torn at both knees. She looked completely broken, but although she reminded Irene of the woman she had been in Anne’s office back in Shanghai—with her jaw bruised again in exactly the same place—there was something different about her now. Her eyes were clear. Irene’s thoughts skipped back to the day before, when Simone had been sick in the forest, and to her refusal of morphine last night. “You’ve stopped taking pills, haven’t you?”

“I’m trying,” Simone said, the words coming out like a sigh of relief.

“Since when?”

“After we left Leh.”

“Why?”

“Roger never would have replaced me, no matter how big a handicap I became. But you didn’t even think twice about it. You let her step right in and then behaved as if I didn’t exist. I exist, Irene.”

Irene started as footsteps crackled in the forest, setting off a warning
chit-chit-chit
in May-ling’s throat. But the sound was too loud to be the Brau villagers. Having disappeared into the night, Xa and Kiri emerged from the jungle, the boy toting a dented can of Folgers coffee. Xa looked around at the state of the camp. His expression was disturbed as he began the work of digging out the swampy fire pit.

Simone’s addiction had become one of Irene’s greatest advantages in the contest over who would end up with the scrolls. Irene could not guess what kind of threat Simone’s sobriety was going to pose to the expedition. As she watched Xa and Kiri, she thought, These are the very people she is determined to help. Wondering if Simone’s feelings about how to help them were shifting as she became clearheaded, Irene asked the question
she had put to Louis last night: “What is your revolution going to give the people up here that Ormond isn’t already giving them? He may be self-serving and probably insane, but he does seem to have protected them. At least he’s keeping the worst of what the government could do to them at bay.”

“I’m not unrealistic, Irene. I know the Khmer Empire yesterday was the same as the French Empire today. A handful of despotic leaders, a privileged upper class, and millions of subjugated citizens. It’s dispiriting, how similar they are. But at least during the time of Angkor, their country belonged to them.” Sinking to rest on a fallen log, Simone gazed across the campsite at Kiri, who was bowed over the slaughtered gibbon near the Brau’s doused fire pit, poking at it with a stick. A scarf of singed snakeskin was wrapped around his neck. “People deserve to do things their own way. Even if it’s the wrong way.”

“So you don’t think your revolution will bring equality?” Irene asked.

“There is no such thing as equality.”

“Please, Simone, just let me give you the money you need, and I’ll take the scrolls.”

Simone sniffed the air as it filled with the smell of brewing coffee. “This country is my country. Its history is my history. But its blood has never been my blood. How can I be trusted to save it if I don’t have its blood to shed?” she asked, her eyes roaming over the campsite. “The scrolls can be that blood, Irene. Don’t you see? I want them more than I have ever wanted anything. They’re the only sacrifice I can make. I have nothing else to offer.” She frowned as she caught sight of the oxcarts. Although the oxen had not run away, two wheels were detached, and the leather yokes had been cut to tatters by a determined assault of machetes. “The Brau were smart, making sure we lose at least a day.”

Reminded of the urgency of their situation, Irene said, “Go wake the men. They can fix the carts and yokes while Clothilde salvages what’s left of the tents. We’ll repair the rest of what we can when we make camp tonight. You and I are going to gather anything that hasn’t been destroyed.” She pointed at items she had already found: a box of Louis’s surveying equipment, two rifles, and three bottles of Glenlivet. “I want to be out of here in an hour.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You of all people should know that nothing is impossible. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we?” Irene took the mug of thick, black coffee that Xa pressed into her hands. “I’ve had it with this gauntlet of Ormond’s. I’m ready. I want to see the temple today.”

“At least twenty meters across,” Louis estimated, after stepping back far enough to peer down the length of his outstretched arm and use his raised thumb to calculate the width of the ravine. Irene, Marc, and Simone remained at the edge of the chasm, gazing skeptically at the bridge that spanned it. Constructed from bamboo slats, it was woven so loosely that gaps of green light shone between the shiny flat stalks. It seemed no more substantial than the torn and ragged spiderwebs that clung to the roof of the jungle. At each end, nets of vines were attached to cables made out of much larger vines, nearly six inches in diameter and buried in waist-high stacks of rocks to hold the bridge secure. The rocks were massive too, but they looked precariously piled. If just one came loose, the heap would
surely collapse and the bridge would swing away from its mooring. Irene could not gauge the full depth of the ravine because far below, the shaggy tops of thousand-year-old trees blocked the ground from view.

The expedition had left the ravaged camp by ten that morning and had walked through the full heat of the day with hardly a pause to rest. Even with his broken ribs, Marc was determined and stoic, and Simone, though clearly recovering from her habit of gulping pills to get herself through each day, had managed to persevere. It was now after four, less than two hours until nightfall. There was no way to get the oxcart across this bridge. Provisions would have to be carried item by item, and then what? Irene had been determined to reach the temple today, and she was upset. “How much farther to Kha Seng?” she asked Clothilde.

Clothilde knelt down to help Kiri unwrap a sweet that Simone had given him. “We passed my village an hour ago,” she explained.

“I don’t understand,” Irene said. They had not seen a single hamlet all afternoon.

“The fork in the trail. If we had gone to the left, that’s the road into Kha Seng. This is the way to the temple. Once we’re on the other side of the ravine, it’s about ten minutes away if the path isn’t completely overgrown.” She was concentrating on the candy wrapper, picking at it with her thumbnail, which was manicured and clean, as was everything else about her. “We can set up camp here. I will show you the temple first thing in the morning.”

Irene was not the only one staring at Clothilde in disbelief. “Ten minutes?” Irene asked.

“Unless the Brau have sabotaged the bridge,” Clothilde said.

A vigilant awareness of the vanished Brau tribesmen had traveled with them throughout the day, on a trail that grew narrower and less traversable with each bruising footstep.

“How can we tell?” Irene asked.

Marc provided the obvious answer. “One of us will have to cross it.”

Irene felt as if her body was being held together by cuts and soreness and a thousand points of fire where red ants had crawled beneath her clothing. Inhaling and exhaling raggedly, she bent down stiffly to study the bridge. Compromised or not, it looked deadly.

Louis offered a crushed packet of Gauloises, the cigarettes poking out as if the group were going to draw straws to see who would risk his life to test the bridge. Everyone except Clothilde took one. Their intent smoking was a puny ritual, but necessary, as they absorbed what she had told them. Wreathed in smoke, Irene thought, I will do it. I must do it. And then it sank in, as if it had been dawdling on the trail and just now caught up with her—the temple was minutes away. To hell with waiting until tomorrow. To hell with waiting another second.

But as she threw her cigarette to the ground and stamped it out with her boot heel, Kiri and the nimble gibbon took off over the swaying bridge. Simone darted after them, followed by Louis and Clothilde. The bamboo slats rocked with their every step, but the boulders did not tumble and the cables did not yank free. Their startling swiftness reminded Irene of the Brau killing the cobra.

“Go on,” Marc urged. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Gripping the railing of woven vines that was strung between two distant trees, Irene walked as quickly as she could, though she felt she was moving much more slowly than the others. She stepped carefully, the leather soles of her boots too smooth from days of scraping over tree stumps and rocky trails. But although the slats tilted and tipped, the structure was remarkably steady. Knowing not to look down, she focused on the end of the bridge.

She was halfway across when a stuttering movement caught her eye. Simone had turned and was running into the jungle. “Louis, stop her!” Irene screamed and in her alarm, lost her footing, skidding as the bridge slipped out from under her.

Clinging to the railing, her legs dangling below the walkway high above the trees, she winced as the roughly hacked side of the bridge dug into her chest. The vine rail cut the flesh of her palms. Marc was making his way toward her, and even though he was walking carefully, his heavy tread rocked the bridge. She held on tighter, waiting for him, but when he reached her, he couldn’t pull her up because of his broken ribs. “Your leg!” he directed, crouching over her. “Swing it up!”

She could hear the fear in his voice, and as she tried futilely to see if Louis had gone after Simone, she kicked up at the same time. The motion
pushed the bridge away. She kicked again. The bridge pitched, and Marc lost his balance, falling to his knees. She could hear Louis and Clothilde calling out, but their words were lost in the disorienting cries of birdsong rising out of the trees below. “Where’s Simone?” she panted.

“To hell with Simone. Let go,” Marc instructed. “Let go of the vine and grab onto the bridge.”

The bridge was a foot wide. She might be able to wrap her arms around it. But if she missed she may as well plummet from a ten-story building. The gnarled treetops would not cushion her fall.

“You can do it,” Marc promised.

She tried one last time to lift herself with the strength of her arms, but her muscles were too sore, and the gain she did make failed to raise her body and only pulled the railing down.

“Back up,” Louis yelled to Marc. “I’m coming out. I’ll try to lift her.”

“Damn it, tell him to go after Simone,” Irene ordered and gasped. Her shoulder sockets blazed. She could feel the weight of her heavy clothes and boots pulling her down. Every second hanging there was another second Simone had to reach the temple before Irene. “Lie down,” she called up to Marc, “and hang on tight.”

There was no way Irene was going to let it end here. She released the railing and took flight, flailing her arms and strapping them around the bridge. It bucked, and the crudely cut ends of the slats tore through the thin fabric of her shirt, slashing the skin beneath her arms. But she was holding on. She was hoisting herself up. She was stabilizing herself on the walkway and miraculously crawling across with Marc behind her, then lying in the moss on the other side, laughing. Hysterical, she could not stop laughing. When she opened her eyes, Simone was bent over her on her hands and knees, with Clothilde clutching her by the collar.

One side of Simone’s face was the color of jaundice where she had treated her scrapes with smears of iodine. Panting, she said, “What’s about to happen, it’s not about our mothers or a revolution or a museum in America. That’s all going to matter, of course it’s going to matter, but not now, not right now.”

Sticky, warm blood pasted Irene’s torn shirt to her burning wounds.
She looked for traces of sanity in the lunatic wideness of Simone’s eyes but found none. “I know.”

Simone lowered her face even closer to Irene’s, her gaze trembling from one side of Irene’s head to the other, seeking something. Her pupils withdrew to black pinpoints. Her breathing was frantic. Irene felt as if she was watching Simone being possessed, and she thought about the spirits that haunted the forest. Had they decided to come for Simone?

“Move!” Simone gasped. Roughly, she shoved Irene aside and clawed into the lichen with her tattered fingernails.

Irene rolled up onto her knees and saw that she had been lying on a flat slab of sandstone. Carvings of lotus flowers scrolled around a latticework of script. “What is it?” she asked.

Simone was kneeling over the stone as if in prayer. “A dedication,” she whispered. “To Avalokiteshvara.”

Marc asked Louis, “What does that mean?”

Louis said, “Every Khmer king dedicated his temple to a deity.”

But Marc had no chance to ask more as Irene jumped up and started to run.

She couldn’t gain speed in the coiling thickets of roots and vines, but she stumbled and careened as fast as the landscape would allow. The ground sucked at her boots, and she jerked them free. Branches whipped her cheeks, but she felt nothing. Tripping, she fell against a rotting tree stump. As she struggled to her feet, she saw a henna wall threading through the jungle. She could hear the others stamping and cracking through the scrub behind her as she approached it. When she raised her eyes, they met those of the
naga
, the mythical cobra, carved on the twin pillars of a high stone gateway. She pulled herself up atop a pile of rubble in front of the arched structure. She searched frantically through the foliage, and in the distance, through the mantle of the trees, she made out the soaring bud shape of a temple’s top—nearly identical to the central pinnacle at Angkor Wat.

Jumping down, she grabbed a stick and hacked at the valance of lianas that hung across the gateway. Pushing her way through, she found herself at the head of a short causeway running across a marsh that must
once have been a moat. The marsh surrounded the giant building blocks of an outer wall, patches of which she glimpsed through the grasp of fromager trees that had taken root along its top edge. The flowing trees held the masonry in their talon grip as if to keep it from escaping.