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In the tropics, the pane through which we view reality is very thin. The
colours are so unnaturally bright; they can suddenly cause the pane to seem to
dissolve. The world becomes two-dimensional; a tapestry behind which
something else waits to announce itself. This was happening now, and I
fought against vertigo, knowing I might never get out of here. On the road, in
a blue screen of gunsmoke, the troops were marching on with suicidal
directness, firing towards the tree line as they went. They seemed to have no
notion of taking cover in the paddy field; Langford was right, they were
fighting a medieval battle. A man not far from me was crawling towards the
ditch, dragging a shattered leg. Already the brown road was littered with
bodies; but the boy carrying the flag was still marching at the head of the line:
a gallant little page who bore a charmed life. (HW, 230)
Koch is bringing his Western characters from a quaint, relaxed Rip Van Winkle sort of world,
deep into the ‘Otherworld’ of ‘Dis’, which is strange and unbalanced due to its domination by
the Khmer Rouge who are oversaturated with the ignorance of tamas, and have become
adharmic agents of the demons.
In the long view of things, considering the flow of the wheel of fate and the overthrow
of dharma by adharma, it is inevitable that the goddess Kali—who is responsible for both
destruction and rebirth—becomes enraged with bloodthirst. This is not only the reality for
humanity, but for the whole of the created cosmos. Koch’s buffalo boy is the macrocosmic
representation of the microcosmic fate of the gallant and courageous flag boy, whose charmed
life must follow the flow of the tides of time:
But then he fell, and it would have been like a child pretending to be
killed in a schoolyard game except for his limp, small stillness, and the blood
that spread from under him. The troops marched around him, firing their
automatic weapons. His green beret had come off in the dust, and one half of
my mind expected his mother to come and gather him up. Instantly, another
little page raced forward to pick up the standard, raising it high and proudly
marching as the other had done: an image repeating itself. (HW, 230)
The battle is quickly disintegrating, and while the next boy comes forward to take up the flag
with the mythical device of Angkor Wat, the journalists are scrambling to get out of harm’s
way, under the calm, watchful gaze of the buffalo boy, who seems to know the battle has just
begun:
Now we were all in Black Bessie, where Vora appeared to have been sitting all
the time. The cabin was full of heavy breathing and the stink of our sweat.
The other correspondents had followed our example, and were already making
off in their motorcyclos, but the boy on the buffalo was still here at the
roadside, staring as though as a passing circus. (HW, 231)
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