The Map of Lost Memories (39 page)

“Do you think the reverend misunderstood what he saw?” Irene asked, her patience shrinking.

“Let me see the diary again,” Simone said.

As if they were the allies Irene had hoped they would be the night they met in Anne’s apartment, they sat shoulder to shoulder on the stone-paved floor. With their backs against the pedestal and the book on Irene’s knees, they read:

Simone crawled forward, toward the copper wall in front of them. She pried her fingers into the seam between its bottom edge and the floor. The panel was half an inch thick and at least four yards high. She rapped the crowbar she had brought against one of the bolts that was driven through the copper and secured between the stacked stones of the wall. “There’s no way to misunderstand that.”

“I have to find them,” Irene whispered. “I have to—”

“Don’t!” Simone clipped the word so that it did not even echo off the walls.

The monk’s eyes widened, and he shifted into the darkness of the outlying room.

“I’ll tell you what you have to do,” Simone declared. “Stop thinking about him. No matter how soon you find the scrolls, you aren’t going to save his life. He
is
going to die. Pay attention to where we are right now, Irene. We’re overlooking something. Something obvious, I know it.” She stared at Irene, expectantly.

It unsettled Irene, to feel so muddled while Simone was acting so levelheaded. Her mind began to churn, trying to fit the pieces together and fill in the blanks. “My mother’s watercolor tablet,” she finally said, taking it from her map case. “There are paintings in it of this temple.”

Slowly, Simone turned the pages, passing images of Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace and Angkor Wat until she came to a rendering of the
chedi
from the monastery out back. She studied it, then continued through the book. She stopped again at the last page. “What’s this?” she asked.

A tall white building stood out against the yellowed tint that age had inflicted on the warped sheet of paper. Its roof was paved in green tiles, and its door was flanked by pedestals that upheld a pair of
apsaras
as tall as humans. It could have been an illustration for a children’s story. “My mother used to say this was where we would live if we were rich,” Irene explained. “It’s her dream house.”

Holding out a packet of Gitanes, Simone muttered, “My mother’s dream house was a tea plantation in the highlands of Java.”

Irene watched the shine from her cigarette pirouette on the copper walls. “At least three of these watercolors come from somewhere in this temple. I say we check each one.” Since the
chedi
would be the hardest to search and the dance pavilion was out in the heat of the yard, she chose the painting of a bas-relief, which they had seen in the eastern gallery, and said, “Let’s start here.”

The lower level of the central temple building contained a perimeter of roofed, open-air galleries, similar in their arcaded, wraparound layout to those at Angkor Wat. But instead of containing scenes of battles and
myths, their walls were covered with an intricate stone tapestry of Buddhist imagery. Irene and Simone stood before a section depicting the Buddha’s enlightenment beneath the
bodhi
tree. It was exactly as Irene’s mother had painted it, down to the bedrock shades of purple and gray. Streaming along the wall on either side were more images of the Buddha among vines and gibbons, deer and birds, in an endless variety of classic postures. The details were so refined that the flames of the stone lamps carved around him seemed to catch fire in the late-morning light.

“What do you think?” Irene asked.

“I think we’re on the right track if what we’re doing is worth six of these little monks,” Simone said, watching as the orange-robed sprites emerged from the forest. They spread themselves out, but they were inept at behaving casually, especially the scruffy pair squatting with their backs pressed against the wall. “They’re like prisoners waiting for a firing squad. Poor things, stuck here with us women. The others are probably having a terrific time keeping an eye on Louis and Marc.”

Irene stepped closer to the seated monks and easily found what they were guarding. A crevice ran from floor to ceiling through a portion of the relief. The sun had edged up over the eave, leaving the gallery in ivory shadows, but as she looked closer she could see that the gap in the wall had been deliberately made, unlike the many ruptures forced by a tree root or fallen stone. The boys stared up at her, as uncertain of her as she was of them. “What do I do?” she asked Simone.

Simone knelt down in front of the boys and spoke, her voice as soft as a feather.

Even though they had heard her in conversation with the abbot, they stared at her incredulously. Between the dark rings around her eyes and the smears of iodine on her face, they must have thought she was a ghoul.

“What are you saying?” Irene asked.

“I’m not threatening them, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Irene knew beyond a doubt, she could feel it as strongly as the blister of the day’s heat, that the temple’s treasure was in that crevice. Why else would her mother have chosen to paint this segment of bas-relief and not any of the dozen others that encircled the temple? Fighting her impulse to
grab the boys by their robes and fling them aside, she focused on the sculpted Buddha that was next to the monk with the wine-stain birthmark on his cheek.

The Master’s hands were held palm-up in his lap, and he was seated on a coiled cobra, which protected him as he meditated. But the Buddha only exacerbated Irene’s agitation. He was a reminder that she did not have one iota of his infinite patience. Her hummingbird pulse rapped so urgently against her temples that she could scarcely hear Simone’s murmured Khmer entreaties to the boys, who were nodding solemnly, as if in some kind of agreement, even though they appeared puzzled at the same time. She said to Irene, “I’m telling them that we know what they’re doing. We know what they’re protecting. We know it’s their job, but we too have a job, and if they don’t move away, we will step over them and go in. We have no choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s bad luck for a Buddhist to be stepped over, and especially for a monk to be stepped over by a woman. I would never do such a thing, but I can’t think of anything else to tell them to make them move.”

Slowly, Simone approached the older boy, to give him a chance. When she was mere inches from him, he flinched and jumped up. He could not do it. He could not let a woman near him, no matter how important the object was that he had been charged with guarding. Not waiting to be challenged, or worse, tarnished, his fellow sentry scuttled away behind him.

Before the boys could change their minds or another young monk rushed in to take their place, Irene stepped into the space where they had been sitting and shone her flashlight through the gap, using her other hand to swat at the swarm of flies that stirred to life under the light. As the beam hovered in the darkness, she heard all of the boys talking at once, their words overlapping, getting louder until it sounded as if they were surrounding her.

She kept her eyes on the dark, narrow space.

“Can you see anything?” Simone asked.

“No, nothing.” But as she pulled the flashlight back, something metallic
sparked. Irene probed the light through the gloom once again, but because of the angle, the flicker was elusive. “I need to get in there. Hold this.”

Simone took the flashlight, and Irene reached her arm inside and felt the open space behind the wall. Though her mind raced with visions of snakes and spiders and bats, she wedged her shoulder into the opening that any one of these monks could easily fit through. Small and malleable, Simone could probably slip into it as well. But there was no way Irene would let Simone get to the scrolls first if she could help it, so she straightened her spine and exhaled, making her body as narrow as possible. The trick would be to move quickly. Too slowly, and she would be stuck, as well as torture her wounds. With her arm already through, she rocked back and forth, back and forth, steadily shoving herself forward. As she tumbled inside, the monks gasped.

Simone’s arm reached in, handing her the flashlight. It took a moment for Irene to make out the dimensions of the compartment, which was no more than three feet wide. Like the other floors inside the temple, this one was slick with moss. The ceiling was so low that her hair grazed along its surface. She used the beam like a searchlight, trailing it slowly along the walls. As she cast it downward, she saw the ground shimmer. “Simone,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I’ve found something.”

“It must be the scrolls. The boys are petrified.”

Irene saw another hint of golden color. She felt dizzy, and she was terrified she would pass out in the small space and they would not be able to get her out. She pressed one hand against the wall to steady herself. After a moment she was able to crouch and shine the light directly down.

But instead of the scrolls, she found herself looking into a pair of wide, glittering diamond eyes set into the compassionate face of a fallen, four-armed bodhisattva. The Buddhist god was the size of Kiri, its skin glowing, its robe inlaid with pentagons of flat-cut rubies. Devastated, Irene crumpled into the darkness.

“Irene?” Simone called. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s not the scrolls,” Irene managed to say.

“What is it?”

“A statue,” she said, her voice choked. “Solid gold. It must be worth a fortune.” She attempted to catch her breath, but there was no oxygen left in the closed space. “Simone, what if the abbot’s not hiding the scrolls from us? What if he doesn’t know anything about them? He could have thought we were lying to him, and this statue was what we’re after.”

“That’s exactly what he
wants
us to think.” But Simone, although consoling, did not sound entirely confident. She sounded as disappointed as Irene felt, as they both realized that it was probably a coincidence that Irene’s mother had painted this portion of the temple. And it was dumb luck that they’d begun their search in the exact place the abbot kept this statue hidden, just as it would be dumb luck if they managed to find the scrolls today. Or tomorrow. Or next year.

Nightfall approached, a swift advance marked by a flight of dragonflies, and then swallows, and then the emergence of the bats that creaked like ancient floorboards overhead. Irene and Simone had searched the dance pavilion. They had searched the chamber outside the sanctuary and two of the accessible libraries as best they could. Their foreheads were scraped from peering into dark gulfs, and their arms ached from shoving and dragging stones. Their fingertips bled. They were dirtier than ever. After telling the abbot they had found the gold statue and assuring him it was not what they wanted, they had lost the attention of the young monks. They tried to convince themselves that this was part of the abbot’s strategy, to make them think there was nothing else worth looking for, but the absence of the nosy boys only added to their discouragement.

Now that it was nearly dark, it would be futile to continue. It was time to go back to camp, but Irene paused with Simone in the doorway of the temple’s main entrance. She watched Louis and Marc, sitting on a low wall at the far end of the yard, sharing a flask and admiring their latticework of stakes and string. She knew what Louis was doing, and she did not blame him for it. He was on the lookout for the scrolls, but at the same
time, he was claiming as much of this temple as he could for himself before anyone else came along. Just in case. She envied him, that he seemed willing to take a consolation prize.

Earlier, Louis had set up torches, and they shed a thin blush through the low-lying twilight. Above her, bats moved restlessly beneath the eaves that overhung the entry, shifting in anticipation of their nightly departure. Irene said to Simone, “From the description in the diary, I thought we were going to find a memorial or some kind of testimony to a king’s passage through the region. Someplace small, the size of Banteay Srei at most. A place we could scour from top to bottom in a day. But this is a whole city.” She gazed at the inner grounds, from the dance terrace to the open sweeps of grass, still amazed by the immensity of it all. “We may as well be searching Shanghai.”

“We need some rest. We’ll have better luck tomorrow. I can feel it.”

Irene appreciated Simone’s determination. “You really do want us to find the scrolls together, don’t you?”

“A part of me even admires you enough that I want you to have them. But I can assure you,” Simone said, “I will never let that happen.”

Irene watched her stride off to join Louis and Marc. It was the same way she had abruptly walked away at Anne’s party the night they met in Shanghai. But Irene was too tired to be annoyed by Simone’s rebuff. She was so lost in her own exhaustion that she did not hear Xa approach until he spoke. “Miss? You go.”

The thrashing of the bats’ wings grew louder, and the stifling air trembled beneath the eaves. “You speak English?” Irene asked, startled.

“Go.” He looked at her as if she should know what he meant. “Kiri go.”

She’d not had a chance to think about Xa’s request to take care of his son since he had made it, and she wished she had the words to explain this to him, to let him know that although she did not yet know how, she would keep her promise. “I’m sorry, Xa, I don’t speak Khmer.”

In the grainy haze of dusk, Marc started toward Irene, carrying the flask.

Xa shoved a scrap of paper into Irene’s hand. “You go.”

The eaves whirred as if a fan had been turned on overhead. To keep
from stumbling, Marc was watching the uneven ground as he walked. Behind him, Simone rested her head on Louis’s shoulder, as if they’d never been at odds. Furtively, Irene glanced into her palm and saw a single word in handwriting that she had known since she was a girl.