The people called him sdaik swaa, the monkey king, or ta asay, the hermit, because he was very old and had a white pointed beard like the hermit in folk tales. He was different from the other gray monkeys I caught and killed in the forest–larger, more dignified. Unlike the rest, he had a ring of white hair surrounding his face, like the halo of light that frames a lunar eclipse, when the serpent-god Rahu swallows the moon and women clang on cooking pots and soldiers fire guns into the air to frighten the snake into spitting the moon out again. I cannot say Rahu is real, only that one bullet did not reach him and instead killed my 5-year-old cousin in Phnom Penh during the lunar eclipse in late 1974, two years before I went into the jungle. It was a beautiful night, the moon washed red in Rahu’s mouth. The pop pop pop of guns put me on edge even before my cousin was hit. Afterward, I cradled her in my arms, her slight body feeling far too heavy, blood soaking my shirt, smelling of bitter metal. I thought, why her and not me? What has this girl done? Only later did I realize what that bullet spared her, when five months later the Khmer Rouge took over.
I was 17 and therefore sent to work in a single men’s mobile team, planting rice and building dirt dams that would wash away in the rain. Like the other “new people” evacuated from the cities, I starved. I caught malaria. After a year and a half, the Khmer Rouge sent me to fish in the forest surrounding Lake Tonle Sap. I thought the Khmer Rouge meant to kill us, like those sent away to “cut bamboo.” But my friend Darith–who was also chosen–told me not to worry, the jungle was the best place to be.
He was right. The Khmer Rouge leaders stayed in a compound nearer the villages, and only came to check on our work fishing inside the forest once in a while. For half the year, during the monsoon, the river flows into the lake, which floods the plain and submerges the jungle. After the water peaks, the river reverses course, and the lake empties back into the sea. The receding water leaves behind ponds full of fish trapped in depressions in the forest. Instead of fishing with nets, we drained the ponds. Two men faced each other on benches, holding ropes tied to two buckets we dipped and swung in unison. Afterward, the women gutted, dried and smoked the fish left wriggling in the mud. It was hard work, swinging the buckets all day, especially when I arrived, skinny and weak.
My first day in the forest, sweating, I took off my shirt. That night my skin itched so badly I couldn’t sleep. The “old people”–local villagers who had lived in the area before the Khmer Rouge took over–said it was from the dust. The lake leaves behind tiny shells and fragments of bone and rotted leaves, which stick to the trees. All that has accumulated and decomposed in the water coats the brush and dries into fine dust. Whenever you touch anything, this powder falls on you like white rain, mixing with your sweat and seeping into your skin.
Later, you become accustomed to the dust, just as the soles of your feet harden, and the muscles of your back and legs strengthen from the heavy work. You learn to walk quietly, to be aware, to distinguish between the dizzying shades of green, the variations of light and shadow. Your ears, once assaulted by the constant noise of the forest, learn to discern the sizes of fish by the popping sounds they make in the ponds.
Your body has been shaped by this place, the prey, the wild. And though the fear never quite leaves you, you have found freedom in entering this place that others fear. The forest conceals danger: cobras, crocodiles, disease. It is isolated, so the Khmer Rouge can kill you easily and no one would know. Deeper in the lake, soldiers patrol in boats. But here on the vanishing shoreline, following the water’s edge as the lake diminished, we lived in a narrow border of safety. We had enough food, more than in the villages outside. Our bodies grew strong. The Khmer Rouge leaders could not watch us all the time, so we had some freedom. A constrained freedom–careful, guarded.
I would do anything to stay.
It was Comrade Peng–he liked us to call him Grandfather Peng–who came up with the idea of killing gray monkeys to increase “food production” for the villages. He called a special meeting to tell us his plan.
“The monkeys are the enemy of the revolution,” he began what was sure to be a very long speech. “They attack our farms. They eat our vegetables. They eat our corn. And so they must be destroyed.”
No one said anything. The monkeys came only occasionally to the farms. The old people rarely killed them; they trapped them only when they were desperate for food, not as a regular practice. Sometimes boys played games of catching a monkey by hand, but then they would let it go.
“The monkeys are the enemy,” Peng repeated. His speeches were the worst of the three Khmer Rouge village leaders. The other two, locals who had been promoted, tended to keep things shorter. One of them had once saved my life by secretly giving me quinine tablets for malaria, but this one, Peng, was out to show off and rise in the ranks. “If we kill the monkeys we don’t have to worry about them eating our vegetables. Nothing wrong with killing them, because monkeys don’t give us any benefit, only problems.” This was a variation of the same saying the Khmer Rouge used to justify killing people, To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.
“If we kill the monkeys we get two benefits,” Peng continued. “One is that the farm is free from attack. The other is we get meat to send to the villages.” I glanced at Darith, who wore a look of feigned interest. My other friend, Arun–whom I’d met after arriving in the forest–was trying to keep his expression neutral and conceal his disgust. “The monkey is the enemy of the revolution,” Peng said once again. “So you don’t need to feel sorry for the monkey. You just organize and kill as much as you can.”
Peng did not forget about his idea. A couple of days later he returned to check on our work and called another meeting before lunchtime. He had a small gray monkey, a juvenile, which he held in one hand by its elbows tied behind its back.
“I have a monkey,” he said, as if we couldn’t see. “Can anyone take care of it?” The young monkey squirmed, kicking its legs as it hung suspended in the air. Peng smiled. “Is there anyone here who can finish off this monkey and cook it?”
He laughed, lowering his arm. We were all scared to death to kill a monkey. He was testing us, because we were new people. The monkey’s legs scrabbled in the mud, and Peng raised it off the ground so that it fought uselessly in the air.
“Who can take care of this monkey?” he asked again. He did not say “kill.”
No one answered. I wondered what Peng would do if we refused. Someone had to do it, or the entire group would be in trouble. Maybe he would take one of us instead of the monkey.
“I’ll do it,” said Arun. He was a shy man, very tall and dark like an African. Perhaps in compensation for his height, he spoke softly. When we worked draining ponds, just three or four of us, he would sing. Sometimes I worked his shift to keep him singing longer. At night, lying in our hammocks, he entertained us by becoming the voice of an imaginary radio, singing songs from before the war, forbidden now. He could make you cry with that voice. The women who dried the fish often tried to sneak near our camp just to hear him. He was the gentlest man I knew. I couldn’t believe he was offering to kill the monkey.
“I’ll do it,” Arun said again, more firmly. I thought he must be trying to prove himself to the Khmer Rouge. He took the monkey and an ax from Peng and walked away. You couldn’t do a dirty job like that near the work compound where it might smell. I followed to help him, hurrying to keep up with his long stride.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
Arun kept walking. As soon as we were out of sight, he turned to me, his face pale and his normally smooth voice shaking, “Brother Vichet, how can we kill it?”
“Why did you say yes?”
“I was upset with Peng.”
Arun stopped at a tree stump. He held the ax hesitantly with one hand. With the other, he grasped the monkey’s elbows in an awkward imitation of Peng. The monkey, not quite an adult, looked even smaller next to Arun’s height.
“The Khmer Rouge can kill humans,” Arun said. “Why can’t I kill just one monkey?”
He raised the ax, closed his eyes, and hit–rather, tapped–the monkey on the back of the head. The monkey cried out and turned around to see where the blow had come from. It looked up at Arun, more curious than hurt, trying to see behind his back where he hid the ax.
Arun tried once more. It was like watching a monk trying to kill a monkey. He hit it again with a gentle thud. The monkey turned to Arun and made a face, like monkeys do when they tease you from the trees.
I thought then about making up a story about how the monkey had escaped, but Peng would never believe it–a tiny monkey with its arms tied behind its back, evading two grown men.
I would have to do it.
I took the monkey from Arun, held down its head, aimed, and swung the ax–hard, but not in the right place. Later I learned the precise spot to kill quickly, so that the monkey wouldn’t suffer long. One hit and it’s finished, like breaking a coconut shell. You hear when you do it right. And then the body is still. But not that first time. The monkey was shaking and kicking and covered with blood. I had to hold onto it tightly so it wouldn’t slip from my hands. I put its head down again and struck two, three, four more times, until I lost count and its body finally stopped twitching. It hung limply in my hand as I held it by the elbows.
I was shaking by then, my own hands slick with blood, feeling sick from the smell, remembering the night my cousin had died in my arms. Arun looked like he had seen a ghost. We didn’t speak or look at each other as we carried the monkey back to the compound.
At first they called us the “monkey group.” Later, just “monkey people.” Of the three of us–Arun, Darith and me–I became the expert. The others tried to avoid it.
No one wanted the job of killing monkeys. We were all Buddhist, old and new people alike. Even though the Khmer Rouge had forbidden Buddhism, killed or disrobed the monks, destroyed the temples and turned them into killing places, still in their hearts the people were Buddhist. They still believed in karma, in the consequences of actions. They believed in the Buddhist precepts, that you do not kill.
No one wanted to do it.
But I did it.
All my anger at the Khmer Rouge I aimed at those gray monkeys who taunted me from the trees and pissed on my head. I hated this job, to kill every day. Five, six, seven. Some-times more. But I did it. I had to do it.
And then I could not stop.
Later, I came to know soldiers who told me how once you have killed, it never leaves you. I could see it in their eyes–a certain intensity, like light pushing through water from the bottom of a well. The way they spoke to me–as if to a comrade, as if I, too, knew–made me uneasy. Some took pleasure in the killing, felt lost when they returned home, and were drawn back to the battlefield–in body or in dreams. Others chose to disappear altogether, taking their own lives, or fleeing into solitude, away from the human world, like ta asay, the hermit on the mountain, like my great-grandfather who disappeared before I was born. My father told me he was a great commander with a long white beard. He came home half-crazy, sick of war. In the end he left his family. He crossed the Thai border alone and no one in Cambodia ever saw him again.
I did not want to kill the monkey king, not at first. I did not even notice him until later in the season, when we camped at a large pond that served as headquarters for our small teams hunting and fishing in the forest around the lake. He arrived each sunset with his troops to forage in the meadow on the other side of the pond. He sat on a tree stump in the middle of the clearing. The other monkeys chased each other around his throne, fighting over every scrap of food. The king himself hardly ate, just sat with his arms folded. He swiveled his head from side to side, keeping watch. He resembled an old man, with his long beard and mustache.
Sometimes he dropped to the ground and walked slowly among his troops, towering over the others, before he ascended again to his stump. He moved regally, taking his time, which is how I imagined Prince Sihanouk would walk, although I had never seen the prince and should not com-pare him to such an animal. That monkey had a command-ing presence. If the group spread out too far, he signaled–a short followed by long whistle–and those who had strayed came scurrying back. When it grew dark, he made a different call, and they immediately retreated. Not one monkey stayed behind. They all followed him, gliding into the trees, disappearing into the canopy of forest.
In the beginning I didn’t go after the monkey king but rather those that were easier to catch. The old people taught me how to trap. I learned how to make a circular cage with a door that slides up and down, held up by a vine threaded through the top of the cage like a pulley and attached to a stick pinned to the ground. This trigger should be placed where the monkey has to pass it to reach the food. If the monkey touches the vine or the stick, even lightly, the trap is sprung. You put a heavy piece of wood on top of the door to weight it and sharp sticks like teeth in the bottom, so when the door falls it locks into the soil.
To get the monkey out of the trap you must reach through the cage and drag it by the tail so it can’t bite you. You raise the door just a little, so you can drop it if the monkey tries to escape. Once you have gotten hold of the monkey, you tie the arms at the elbows behind its back. You have to have a strong grip. You take it out and hit it with an ax. Then you carry the dead monkey back to clean.
You hang the body by a liana vine from a tree branch. First you cut away the skin from around the neck, then cut off the hands, feet, tail. You slit open the chest and peel the skin down, like stripping off a shirt. Without its skin, the monkey body looks like a human, the shape of its muscles formed like ours. It smells strange, fishy. The oily flesh glistens. You slice open the stomach, remove the guts, and bury them in the ground so they will not smell. Finally, you cut off the head.
We smoked the bodies whole, like fish, leaving the meat on the bones for soup. At first the people in the forest refused to eat it. I tried it once but couldn’t swallow. I looked at Arun’s stricken expression as he tried to chew. “Not delicious,” he said and spit it out. After that, as long as we remained in the forest, we never ate monkey again.
But out in the villages where they were starving–where we, too, could be soon–they were glad to eat anything. They cooked the monkey meat in a sour soup with morning glory leaves. They said in the stew, you couldn’t tell what it was.
I killed hundreds of them. But I could not catch the monkey king. The old people told me, “You’ll never get that one. He has a spirit that protects him.” It was true, he evaded every trap I set, although I managed to catch some of his troops and many more from other groups–so many I lost count. Sometimes I had to kill the baby and mother together, because if you killed only the mother, the baby would starve, so I killed them all.
It was a terrible, terrible thing. But I had to do it. I did it so the Khmer Rouge would trust me, so that I could continue our activities in the forest, the beginnings of our quiet resistance. I had started to talk with Darith and Arun, at first in tentative whispers of discontent, while we worked draining the ponds away from the Khmer Rouge. Later, we became more organized, expanding the circle of those we could trust. We developed a system of lookouts, messaging, and food caches. We debated where the Khmer Rouge kept weapons and whether we should try to acquire them. Arun traded secretly for a radio from a village outside, and after much experimentation managed to piece together a battery from an old carbon core and bicycle handlebars. We hid the radio in tree roots and underbrush, listened at night, Darith doing his best to translate French broadcasts and English static of Voice of America and the BBC. We hoped to hear some mention of Cambodia, but there was nothing at all, as if Cambodia no longer existed in the world.
In our isolation, we did not know what was happening beyond the jungle. Only the forest seemed real, and the deepening ties of our friendship. But I knew if the Khmer Rouge didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t stay in the forest for long–the soldiers would take you away to “cut bamboo.” So I earned the respect of the Khmer Rouge and the old people by working hard. When we drained the ponds, I designed a bigger, heavier bucket, that only two of us were strong enough to use, in order to empty the water faster. They could not fault me. If I had to kill monkeys to stay in the forest, I would kill monkeys.
I took no enjoyment in the task. It was a job I decided to do well. I felt neither pleasure nor horror. Only when I saw their skinned bodies did I think, They are almost human.
Each time, I felt a shock of recognition, to see how much they looked like us. And I told myself, I must harden myself against this. I still have to do what I must do. I sacrifice the monkeys for our safety. A trade. Their lives for ours. For our fragile resistance. Our small piece of freedom in this forest.
I made a mistake once. I had five monkeys lined up. I struck them one at a time. Bang, throw aside. Bang, throw aside. When I looked at the pile of dead monkeys, I saw one rise and run away, weaving like a drunken man.
I called to Arun, “Quick, get the bastard enemy! Don’t let him escape!”
We chased it down. The injured monkey could not go far. Arun caught and held it as I began to interrogate. “You bastard enemy, why do you want to escape?”
Arun looked at me like I was crazy. Then he added, “Why do you want to spy?”
He laughed. He knew what I was doing. I took a stick and continued, “Why do you want to attack the revolution? You think you can hide from us? The revolution is strong. We will cut off your roots, never let you grow to defeat us.” I slapped the stick in my palm as I paced back and forth. “So tell me, how did you get here? Where do you come from? You think you can hide here in the forest? Where is your headquarters? Who is your leader?”
I pointed the stick at the monkey’s face. The monkey, of course, couldn’t say anything. It was mute, just like the people. It didn’t matter what you said or didn’t say, you were still the enemy.
“Why don’t you say anything?” I asked.
The poor monkey sat there.
“Shit, this bastard doesn’t talk,” I said to Arun. “Take him away.”
How can the monkey resist? Bound, helpless, swaying like a drunkard, still stunned from the blow that didn’t kill him.
“Take it easy,” said Arun. The monkey wriggled in his hand.
“You see, the enemy still wants to struggle against the revolution.”
“Let this one go,” said Arun.
“No, we can’t.”
“Take it easy.”
“We can’t,” I said again. “It will die now anyway.”
I took the monkey from Arun and held down its head. Be-fore I struck, I said out loud what I usually said silently, “I’m sorry. Sooner or later we all have to die. Maybe in your next life, you will be a king instead of a monkey. Maybe you will be born in America.”
That is what I prayed for them each time.
After a while, those gray monkeys became too easy to catch. All I needed to do was put water and food in the trap. I scattered grains of rice to lead them into the cage. They could not resist. Even though they must have seen how many of their companions disappeared, the next time the method still worked. Only later the day came when we saw no more monkeys in an area, so we moved and I made new traps. As we followed them, they became harder to find, and the forest quieter than before.
Not even the old people could believe how many monkeys I caught and respected me as an expert trapper. But as they watched the ox carts loaded with carcasses leave the forest, they warned me again, “Don’t try to catch that monkey king. You’ll never get him. Never. He’s lived a long time. He will die by himself, alone.”
But I was going to get that monkey. I did not believe I could not catch him. I studied where he came and went. I learned the language of his signals. Even when I couldn’t see him, I knew when he was calling back his troops, when he was reprimanding them, when he was commanding them to leave. I learned his preferred places, his patterns of travel. As I followed his troops, I kept quiet, careful not to show myself. By then Arun and Darith had given up catching the monkeys, leaving it to me, while they worked draining the ponds. One morning I told them I would be back by sunset, and I went after the monkey king alone.
I went to one of his favorite clearings and made a trap–a strong, beautiful trap. I had improved the design, creating a better door, a more sensitive trigger mechanism. That day I made three cages–one very large one for the monkey king and two smaller ones. I put a lot of rice and water in the traps. I climbed into a tree and made a blind, surrounding myself on all sides with branches, thick and natural, so the monkeys wouldn’t suspect the hiding place had been made by a human.
I waited inside the enclosure, sweating and swatting mosquitoes through the morning. I knew by midday they would come.
The monkeys arrived at noon. The little ones fanned out into the meadow, but the monkey king stayed at the edge. His white halo of hair flared against the forest. He moved slowly, climbed up onto the high end of the fallen log, and scanned the clearing with the serious expression of an old man. As he looked from side to side, his long white beard swayed across his gray chest.
For a moment, I didn’t think of the king or the hermit from the folk tales but of my great-grandfather who had disappeared.
He stayed on the log a long time. Only his troops came out into the open, playing and eating and bickering as usual. I’d put food not only in the traps but also scattered in thick trails leading into the cages.
Two juveniles scampered into the smallest trap. They were so busy eating they didn’t notice the door fall. Only after the food ran out would they realize they couldn’t escape. I calculated how long the rice would last before they’d start to panic and alert the others. Ten minutes, maybe.
Finally, the monkey king dropped to the ground and walked slowly into the clearing. He stopped and picked up a few grains of rice to eat. Then he looked at the large trap I had made for him. Several monkeys had gone in and out already, too light to trigger the door, just as I had planned. I didn’t want to catch the small ones and miss him. Right now three of them squatted inside the large cage, eating.
The monkey king approached carefully, ignoring the rice trail at his feet. He took a step, looked to the left and right, took another step. When he reached the cage, instead of entering, he examined it from the outside. He backed up and began to walk all around the perimeter.
I thought, Grandfather, hurry up. Don’t think so much.
I could see the pile of rice dwindling in the small cage. It would run out at any moment. I was sweating in the heat of the blind and the suffocating moisture of the leaves.
Come on, Grandfather, go in.
At last he approached the door. Two monkeys ran out of the cage past him, but the third stayed inside crunching the rice. The king grunted and the last one darted out. The king stood at the opening and sniffed.
Still, he didn’t enter. He stepped halfway in and hesitated, his head and one arm past the door.
I thought, I’ve got you now.
I leaned forward in the blind, willing him to step inside. The forest was very quiet.
Just as he shifted forward, about to take that final step, a large black bird shrieked overhead–shrill, imperative, in a long horrible scream. Startled, I nearly fell out of the tree, grabbing a branch as one foot crashed through the bottom of the blind.
The monkey king leaped back. As he jumped, his tail whipped around and hit the vine. He was out of the cage by the time the door fell, bang, its teeth locked into the ground.
He signaled to leave–a loud urgent whistle–and bounded out of the clearing. The other monkeys followed, emptying the meadow. Their fleeing sounded like rain, hundreds of hands and feet passing through the leaves. Only the two cap-tives remained, leaping frantically in the small cage.
I knew even then that the monkey king was gone for good. It was like the old people said, nobody could catch him. I’d never get near him again, although I would continue to try.
I dropped to the ground and entered the clearing. The bird had settled into the branches of a nearby tree, watching me. I wanted to kill that bird, sitting like it had done nothing. Why did it have to scream at just that moment? Why had it warned the monkey king?
Or was it warning me?
I rarely saw those birds in the forest. My father had told me those black birds are the companions of the dead. They come to guide spirits into their next lives. But I wasn’t dead.
I took a stick and aimed, hurling it as hard as I could. The bird flew off–passing so near my head I could see the ragged tips of its feathers and hear its black beating wings. It landed in a tree on the other side of me, and began groom-ing its breast and picking between its ugly toes. I wanted to ring its neck.
“Go now. Get out of here!” I threw another stick. “Why did you come here? Who are you waiting for? Who died?”
Why was it so quiet now?
Whose spirit had it come to guide?
I thought of Arun and Darith waiting at the camp, the others hidden in the forest. Had the Khmer Rouge found them out? Fear seized my stomach. My pulse pounded in my head. My hands felt numb.
The two juveniles still leapt crazily in the cage, panicking and pissing on themselves. They stunk so badly I didn’t want to go near them. I pulled up on the door, yanking hard to release it from the soil. They were young, with very little flesh on them.
“Go, get out of here!” I shook the top of the cage. Confused, they couldn’t find the exit at first. Then they shot out across the clearing.
I didn’t know then, couldn’t know, what would happen to us. How our small resistance would grow and eventually become careless. How I would be selected to escape to the border, on a mission to find others to join us. How just days before the fall of the Khmer Rouge, many of my friends would be massacred in my absence. How I would find Darith stumbling on a road, stunned, as he told me how each of them, including Arun, had died.
I couldn’t know. All I knew then was that the monkey king was gone and I’d never get near him again.
I looked up at that damn bird still perched in the tree, preening its glossy wings. Its feathers gleamed blue and black. I looked for something else to throw at it.
“You too! Go now!”
I fired a rock, narrowly missing its head. It turned to gaze at me, opening and closing the sword sliver of its beak.
“Go!” I yelled again. I grabbed another stone the size of my fist, but before I could release it, the bird lifted off without a sound, rising into the sky. I flung the rock anyway, aiming at the space it had left on the branch. Then I picked up another, and another, hurling stones into the empty air.
———-
Sharon May worked in Cambodian refugee camps in the 1980s and later returned to Cambodia to edit the anthology “In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing From Cambodia” (University of Hawaii Press). Her stories have appeared in Tin House, StoryQuarterly, MANOA, Alaska Quarterly Review, Other Voices and Crab Orchard Review. She recently received the Robie Macauley Award for Fiction from StoryQuarterly. She holds a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, where she is finishing a collection of linked stories about Cambodia.
