Quiller Salamander

Pain was there, and this comforted me: the nerves were not yet numbed, could still serve the organism. The pain was in the left hand, wrist, arm, burning, as if I'd plunged them into fire. I got onto my feet again and flayed my arm around, filling the dark with flames, touching the trees until they too took fire and the storm sent sparks flying, seized the flames and hurled them in hot bright banners as I stood dazzled, reeling under the heat, the eyes seared, the mouth open and filled with coals, roaring like a dragon, bellowing flames.

Meditate, he, the man with the unremembered name, had said.

Crashing to the earth with the legs buckling, lying across a creeper, a long thin — oh Jesus Christ I can't do with more of — a thin, unmoving creeper, let go then, and meditate, fear nothing and fear not fear, reach for the silence, the stillness, the domain of the unified field, of universal consciousness and love, let go, let go, and drift into the void where everything is nothing, and nothing everything, let go.

But this halcyon respite has not been for long, has it, our good friend, for we are running again — running? — lurching, we mean, lurching and staggering and hitting trees, pitching down and crawling until the thought of the thin green hanuman catapults us to our feet again and we reel onward through the crashing dark, the moon down now, the nine moons down, is this venom always lethal? tell us, pray, are we a goner, done for, is this the Styx we're drowning in as we goad ourselves through the jungle night? Then for what purpose, for God's sake?

To find the bullock track.

A ray of sanity there, my masters, there's thought left somewhere in the fevered brain, squealing like a rat on fire for attention, the bullock track, yea, verily, in the name of the salamander: the bullock track and the road to Pouthisat and London, you must be out of your bloody mind, the veins are full of that thing's venom and the nerves are running riot, never mind the salamander, the first thing is to perpetuate life, carry this charred and ember-bright organism through the burning dark, east by the polar star glimpsed here and there through the endless canopy of leaves; listen to the thoughts still left in the smouldering consciousness and let them be thy guide, world without end as we fall again, fall down again, and this time we do not, we can not get up, so destroyed are we in this unholy fire, a shred of blackened bone and gristle and hollow, echoing despair, God rest ye here, my most unmerry gentleman, and offer the relics of thy substance to the earth.

Skulls grinning at me, into my face as the cold light creeps through the sugar palms. Skulls, lined up in orderly rows, in serried ranks of bone-white laughter.

But these are real.

I know this.

And then there is darkness again, and in the darkness movement, a lifting, a bearing away, and in the wan light of morning a face leans over mine, smiling. An arm raises my shoulders, and a voice sounds.

'Drink.'

21: KHENG

'What were those skulls?'

The monk closed his eyes, opened them. 'They were my brothers.'

I remembered stone columns, ancient, laced with creeper. 'It was a temple?'

'Yes.'

Sometimes he spoke French, sometimes English, his language scholarly in both.

'That was a long time ago,' I said, more as an exercise than anything, testing the memory, finding it sound.

'It was yesterday.'

He meant it still seemed like yesterday. It would have been twenty years ago, when the Khmer Rouge were scouring the countryside, hunting for intellectuals, monks, school-teachers, village scribes.

I finished the bowl of soup or whatever it was, perhaps herbs; it had tasted brackish, of roots.

'Did you carry me here?'

'Yes. You were in the helicopter, I assume.' He had a smile like the Dalai Lama's; the sweetness of his spirit lit his eyes, humbling me, my brute calling.

'You heard it fly over?' I asked him.

'Yes.'

Quick — 'When?'

'The night before last.'

'Today is the seventeenth?'

'By your calendar.'

Two days to the deadline. Call it two minutes, then, there's no bloody difference.

'It was a hanuman?' I heard the monk asking.

'What? I think so. Green.'

Gently he turned my wrist over, studying the blackened flesh. 'You are a very strong man,' he said. 'You were already over the worst of the fever when I found you. The bite of the hanuman is usually fatal.'

'You go there to pray?'

'To be with my brothers.'

This was a cave we were in, draped with tapestries from the temple; a Buddha sat in a niche the monk must have carved from the rock; a small oil lamp flickered in the depths of the cave, and I saw an owl perched there, staring with bright obsidian eyes, its shadow huge against the rockface.

'You must sleep again now,' the monk said.

'How far are we from Pouthisat, overland?'

'A hundred and forty kilometres.'

On Pringle's topographic map it was a hundred by air. 'Sleep?' My capacity to think linearly was still not back in shape. 'No. I need to reach Pouthisat.'

The monk hitched his threadbare robe around him, watching me with curiosity. 'You flew here from Pouthisat?'

' Yes.'

'I heard you disturbing the Khmer Rouge. Was that deliberate?'

'It was on the cards.'

'You were accompanied?'

'Yes. My pilot didn't survive.'

'He was in the conflagration?'

'Yes.'

'We shall pray for him, my brothers and I.' In a moment he said, 'You were pulling the tail of the tiger. Of Saloth Sar.'

'Who is he?'

'It is the real name of Pol Pot.'

'He's there now, at the camp?'

'Yes. But he is ill.'

Oh really. 'How ill?'

'He has ceded his powers to General Kheng.'

'His second in command?'

'So it is said.'

'Who says? How do you know this?' I stood up and fell down again, knees buckling, he wasn't quick enough to catch me, hadn't expected me to do anything so bloody silly.

'You must rest,' he said, his eyes amused. 'You are among those who goad themselves through life. That is not the way.'

'Who told you about General Kheng?' It sounded slurred. This was perfect, wasn't it, listen, within two days I had to get this film into Pringle's hands a hundred and forty kilometers away overland and he had to get it to London for the British and American and UN brass to look at and they had to go into joint session and if they decided on an air strike the bombers would have to be airborne in time to make the hit by dawn of the nineteenth, the day after tomorrow, and at the moment, at this very moment when I should be kicking the whole thing into action my speech was slurred and the cerebral cortex was still deep fried and when I stood up I fell down again, this was perfect, so what is, what is to be done, my good friend, in this rather sorry situation?

'Anger does not assist in recovery,' I heard the monk saying gently. 'Rather should we relax, and let our karma resolve our predicament for us.'

'Right.' I sat up, arms around my knees, letting my head hang loose, rolling the neck muscles. 'You're damn' right. Excuse me. Who told you about General Kheng?'

'It is known in the village. The peasants bring me offerings of food and the bare necessities. Look!' He held up a tin frying pan, a real work of art, copper rivets and everything. 'They also bring me news of the Khmer Rouge, for what it is worth.'