JOHNNY GONE DOWN (9 page)

When I woke up next, the sun had risen.

Where was I?

You are in a forest in Cambodia trying to escape to Thailand
, someone said.

What? I’m running late for an examination.

Remember the Khmer Rouge? Remember Cambodia? Boy, you need to get it together, don’t you?

Eat. Remember what Sam said?
I
eat anything that moves.’ Look around. Find something that’s moving.

I spotted a crab in the thick undergrowth and threw a stone at it. It scuttled away.

Easy, boy. Focus. Wait for the kill. Impatience has always been your downfall.

This time I waited for a crab to come near me, and picked up a larger stone. Crash. There, killed the bastard, I said triumphantly.

Now, light a fire.

I looked around for two stones and realized that my left wrist was hanging from my arm like a loose thread. How could I build a fire with one arm?

No problem. Just eat it raw.

Raw?

Yes. No seven-course meal awaits you here.

I retched, but slowly tore the poor sucker to pieces. I ate all the soft bits.

Good, now remember your father’s stories from his NDA days? Eat some grass to digest it.

Now, drag yourself to the stream and drink as much water as you can. Idiot, don’t stand like that. First, fasten your legs with those fallen branches for support. Good. Make them tight.

Get your bearings. Remember where the jeep came from? Remember the map from the time you first arrived?

Now boy, don’t get sad. Think of Ishmael, the Karma Yogi. Pleasure and pain. Joy and sorrow. Triumph and disaster. You control nothing, your only duty is to escape.

Okay, now rest and then start walking west.

Yours is not to question, boy. Just walk. Avoid the dirt tracks, just walk through the brambles and the bushes, not much left of you to be torn to pieces. Change course only when you smell decomposing flesh, because that means the Khmer Rouge are killing some villagers nearby.

Stop walking like that, will you? Be careful of the land mines Ishmael said are planted in the forest — stop whenever you see an aberration on the ground and change course.

Eat, drink, rest, walk, and stay out of trouble. How difficult is that, you spoilt son of a brave army officer?

I heard voices as I edged closer to a clearing with small huts, a herd of cattle, and a few men and women dressed in plain clothes walking around in what appeared to be a state of normalcy.

Who are they? I asked. Are we close to the Thai border?

I didn’t receive an answer.

I looked around frantically.

For five days and five nights, we had stumbled through the dense, bracketed forests together.
Together, we endured the small, pointy bamboo plants that pierced the soles of our feet, and the angry mosquitoes that feasted on us at night. We stayed awake to beat away the snakes slithering in the bushes, and avoided the herds of trampling elephants in the distance. If it weren’t for him, I would still be sitting on the bank, cursing my fate, staring at the pieces of bone that were now my left wrist and obsessively rubbing away the dried, caked blood that stuck to my body like another layer of skin.

The voices grew louder as I approached the clearing cautiously, hiding behind bushes and tall grass.

They were speaking in Khmer, I suddenly realized. Why were they speaking in Khmer when this was the Thai border? The realization, when it struck, almost knocked me to the ground.

I had completely misjudged the coordinates. I had always been bad at reading maps.

Instead of walking to Thailand, I had probably walked in the opposite direction, to the northern end of Cambodia. I was probably back where I had started. I felt every bit of hope and life drain away from me.

The voices became louder and I saw three healthy looking men approaching the bush behind which I stood.

I didn’t try to hide. I didn’t try to run. I had
nothing left to fight for any more. It was over. I had tried my best, but it wasn’t good enough.

The men spotted me and shouted in angry voices.

Maybe it was for the best, I thought. Who knew what horrors awaited me in Thailand?

They came running towards me.

Peaceful, unresisting, I allowed myself to fall, glad that it was finally over.

Monochromatic, multi-hued colours, lights going in and out, an array of bald men parading in orange robes, no hunger pangs, no overpowering thirst. This is heaven, I thought - except for the excruciating pain in my arm. I drifted away, peaceful despite the pain.

More colours, the sweet smell of incense, a reassuring, low-pitched chant, cool and calm, no hunger, no thirst. Just the pain, no longer throbbing, but dull, aching, and grey. Please make it go away, God, and I will be completely at peace.

‘Can you hear me?’

I woke up with a start. A bald white angel with golden eyebrows dressed in splendid orange-brown robes was sitting next to me. God, the Almighty. Deliverance.

His calm face broke into a smile. ‘Are you feeling better?’ he asked in English with a strong American accent.

I was alive, I thought abstractly. This wasn’t heaven but it would do just fine. ‘Where am I?’ I asked, my head still throbbing.

‘You are in a monastery in Thailand,’ he said kindly.

But I wasn’t supposed to be here, I thought. My guide had led me back to Cambodia.

‘Where is he?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

‘The man who was with me.’

‘They found you alone.’

I drifted away again.

‘Where am I?’

I was alive and conscious, lying on a wooden bed in a small, well-lit room with light blue walls. The bald American in orange robes was sitting next to me.

‘You are in a Buddhist monastery in the Rong Glua village on the Thai side of the border,’ he said.

I was trying to process this information when a sudden pain shot through my left arm. I reached out to grab it with my right hand. My hand hit the wooden bed.

‘The doctors had to amputate your arm,’ he
said gently. ‘Gangrene had set in from the elbow down.’

I stared at him in disbelief. Just how long would this nightmare last, I wondered. It was a bloody vacation, goddamit. I knew I had made a mistake. But how long would I have to pay for it? My arm, I thought, my arm. No basketball, no soccer, no NASA. I was a cripple. Tears stung my eyes.

‘I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible you feel.’ He leaned forward and held my right hand. ‘But if it makes you feel any better, you are lucky to be alive.’

I looked at him, tall, broad-shouldered and erect in his flowing monk’s robes, both arms intact - and hated him.

‘We weren’t confident that you’d make it when the villagers at the border brought you here a month ago. You had lost a lot of blood, your body was badly bruised and cut, and you looked like a skeleton. They thought you were dead until you started mumbling. They brought you here because you spoke English and didn’t look Cambodian. The refugee camps on the border are well-intentioned, but so busy that individual attention is impossible.’

It came back to me. The villagers who I’d thought were Cambodians were probably Thai, and Khmer must be spoken at the border in the same way that Hindi is spoken at the Indo-Nepalese border. When we were in high school, Sam and I had once run away to Nepal to get stoned. Suddenly, I wished I
hadn’t been found by the villagers. I would rather be dead than be a cripple.

‘I am from Texas,’ he said. ‘I came here as a Red Cross worker, but became a Buddhist monk instead.’ He shook my right hand. ‘I am David, now Monk Dechen.’

‘I am Nikhil,’ I said. ‘I came from Boston on a vacation.’

It sounded unreal.

He patted my head, and I cried shamelessly against his arm.

‘Where is the man who helped me?’ I asked after a while, trying to pull myself together.

‘Who?’ he said with a puzzled expression.

‘There was someone in the forest who guided me to the border, otherwise I’d never have made it.’

‘They found you alone.’

How could he die in the forest when he seemed so confident? Why couldn’t I remember his name or his face?

‘Was it a voice that spoke to you?’ David asked.

I nodded, although I didn’t like the implication of his words. I wasn’t a lunatic. I didn’t have visions of God speaking to me.

‘You aren’t going crazy,’ said David kindly. ‘Many crisis survivors experience this third presence. I am not a psychologist, but from what I understand, the mind divorces itself from the body in situations of extreme duress when the physical systems shut down.’

It made sense. I was too fatigued to move even a step, yet I had managed to walk for five days without stopping or treading on a mine. For what, though? I wished I had known it would end like this. I would have allowed myself to slip into eternity.

‘Do you know the date today?’ said David.

I shook my head.

‘5 June, 1977,’ he said.

Sam and I had arrived in Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, just after our convocation at MIT. I had spent more than two years in that cell. What was my fault? What was Ishmael’s crime? What had she done, the pregnant woman who had been hacked to death in front of our eyes?