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own vast and, in context of the surging forces of adharma which would have no reason to stop
at the borders of Southeast Asia, seemingly unprotected continent. The border region between
Cambodia and Thailand is ‘a flat red wasteland that’s waterless and parched and burning,
resembling inland Australia’. Dryness is no longer fortuitous but demonic, and grey-green is
the colour of the ‘juiceless’ ‘smudges of vegetation’ which represent the desolation of the once
yellow-green landscape (HW, 437).
While light green is the colour of the regeneration of life, Koch’s use of green regularly
attenuates the positive implications of the yellow which is its neighbour in the spectrum. There
is always something unresolved in Koch’s depiction of the eyes of Billy Kwan and Guy
Hamilton in The Year of Living Dangerously as green, where they seem connected to the eyes
of the ephemeral Cheshire Cat. In Highways to a War Claudine Phan has ‘surprising grey-
green eyes’ (HW, 401), but she, unlike the cat or Langford’s other women, refuses to let herself
disappear. Rather, she is a manifestation of the divine feminine in the time of destruction. She
is like Parvati, the Mother Goddess, who will bring the spring back to the world, but must first
wait out the ascendancy of the forces of evil, and then hope that her Kali-aspect will prevail
over the demons. Grey-green is also associated with the Black Ghosts who hide in the dark
shadows of the palm trees. When Langford finally chooses to become a fighter, as the Khmer
Rouge are trying to overrun his position, his focus is less on the enemy trying to kill him than
on how ‘the shining, dark green leaves of the mango got very distinct just above me’ (HW,
378). Green is the most ambiguous colour on Koch’s palette. He alludes to its varied
symbolism when he discusses the meanings of trees.
Quiet against the sky, they are a decoration in a book, or a pleasant park to
create peace; they are perhaps a refuge from danger. But then again, they are
the treacherous cloak that hides danger itself. Which were these trees? (HW,
354)
Yellow is the predominant symbolic colour in Highways to a War, and while it generally
conforms to the Jainist and wayang kulit systems, it can be rather puzzling. In The Year of
Living Dangerously, Jill Bryant has, very logically, blonde hair; so does her rival, the
enigmatic Russian operative Vera Chostiakov, who apparently drugs Guy Hamilton in order to
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