Music of the Ghosts Read online

  He feels a stream of water from Dr. Narunn’s brush landing on his face. He opens his eyes. To his surprise, he sees only the young physician in the ceremony hall with him. The ceremony has finished, everyone is gone—as are all traces of sunlight—and night has made its pale appearance in gray.

  Smiling from across a lit candle, Dr. Narunn teases, a hint of concern in his voice, “I didn’t think my chanting was so melodic as to induce such melancholia. You’re crying, my friend.”

  Interlude

  Morning comes

  soft

  steps

  on

  liquid-green

  marble

  tiptoeing

  toward

  my bed

  ________________dragging

  a thin beam of sunlight

  like the magic wand

  of a child at play.

  I sleep . . .

  dreaming of you—

  a sanctuary

  tucked

  in the landscape of childhood

  memories—

  a daughter’s prayer nipped

  in the bud by

  whizzing bullets

  shouts of revolution

  A father’s disappearance.

  A bird calls

  from the walled garden

  whistling

  its morning song

  Coffee-colored salamanders

  cross paths, nod, How do you do? I’m fine, thank you,

  and scurry away like two arrows

  shooting in opposite directions.

  Fear tosses and turns, fighting a battle already lost,

  Old hurts seep through layers of selves,

  travel the river of histories,

  remembered voices,

  then, like grains of sand,

  vanish into oblivion.

  And I . . . I wait for you in the calm

  and silence

  of a thousand textures and hues

  I wait for you

  in the folds of white hibiscus.

  Second Movement

  Her gaze falls on the young man, and it’s like staring at a silhouette she’s known all her life, a figure she’s encountered repeatedly in her disparate dreams. His head is bowed so that she can’t quite make out his face, but the rest of him is clearly delineated through the incense smoke wafting in the vihear. Tall and lean, with broad shoulders and elongated collarbones that seem to exaggerate the width of his exposed chest, this prince-like figure appears statuesque, chiseled from stone, his mannerisms and movements stylized, choreographed by some ancient code.

  Covered only from the waist down with a swath of white cotton knotted into a loose kben, he bows three times to the principal image of the Buddha at the center of the prayer hall and once in each of the four cardinal directions. And only then, as he turns, does Teera feel certain she’s met him before. “He’s beautiful,” she murmurs.

  “Well, yes, and maybe it’s okay to say so, since soon he’ll no longer be a monk.”

  Teera turns to Mr. Chum standing beside her and stammers, “W-what, he’s a monk?” No wonder he appears so strikingly familiar. She looks again and realizes now where she met him, on these same stairs, when she visited the temple the first time a week or two ago, when she ran fleeing from him like an idiot. “I’m sorry . . . I don’t mean to offend.” Sometimes she forgets the culture she’s returned to, its rules of behavior, what a woman can or cannot express aloud.

  “Oh, I don’t mind!” Mr. Chum lets out a soft chuckle. “If only some pretty young lady thought that of me!”

  Teera is grateful for his lightness, his easygoing attitude. Then, unable to help it, she ventures further, “How do you know he’ll no longer be a monk?” She reddens in spite of herself.

  “He’s wearing the white garb of a novice who’s just been given permission to disrobe.”

  Disrobe. Stop it!—He’s a monk. Or was. All the same, she feels scandalized at the sight of those bare shoulders. She looks away, upset with herself. You have no shame.

  Mr. Chum continues, oblivious to her inner monologue, “He’s paying final respects before he puts on regular clothes again and returns to lay life. Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

  “No!” Teera blurts out, and promptly silences herself lest they disturb the man in the vihear. “He should have his solitude, don’t you think? Maybe we can come back afterward. I’m—I’m afraid I’ll change my mind again if I don’t do this now.”

  Mr. Chum nods. “I’ll wait for you here, then? Are you sure you don’t want me to come along?”

  “Y-yes.” She dithers, overwhelmed by the sense she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

  In the car on the way over, she managed to explain her earlier confusion and fear, why she’d panicked and run the last time they came to Wat Nagara, what this place held for her, what it holds for her still, and, despite her persistent apprehension, the reasons that compel her to revisit the temple.

  “I have to do this alone,” she tries to reiterate with more conviction than before.

  “All right then,” Mr. Chum says decisively, as if to push her along. “Just signal if you need me.”

  He’s referring to the routine that has served them well when they venture out together: she speed-dials him on her cell phone, allows just one ring, and he comes to their agreed meeting place. He’s grown protective of her, assuming the avuncular role accorded him through the familial titles they use for each other, and getting a local mobile number was his idea, for the convenience as well as for her safety.

  The old driver understands the importance of this visit. It’s not every day, he told Teera in the car, that you cross paths with someone who might be able to shed light on what happened to your loved ones, who may have witnessed their last days, their final breaths. To know for certain they died, even without the proof of bones and ashes, is its own kind of peace, for it allows us to separate the missed from the missing. He himself would walk to the ends of the earth to meet another who could tell him what became of his wife and children, his first family, whose silhouettes he still searches for in crowds, whose voices he imagines hearing through the market din. The strange thing is I wouldn’t know if I bumped into them right now. Afterward, he seemed surprised that he’d shared so much with her.

  Likewise, Teera is astonished by how much she’s come to rely on him, to trust him. Once he was a Khmer Rouge soldier whose shadow she would’ve feared. Now it’s clear to her they are on the same journey, her search becomes his, and he is utterly invested in the mundane task of ferrying her around, always ready for their next quest.

  As Teera makes her way down the steps, she realizes there remains very little of the temple she remembers from her childhood. All the structures seem to have been built only recently, and the grounds are smaller than she recalls, perhaps because of the brick walls, the fresh clay texture not yet sullied by the blackish-green algae veining other surfaces. There are some ancient-looking trees, at least old enough to have preceded the Khmer Rouge, but no structure stands out or strikes her memory with ringing clarity. Yet, the resonances of what once existed are all around her, and she feels in her steps the imprints of her childhood strolls upon these grounds; she senses walking beside her the pralung of her young self, that little girl she once was, at times running ahead, leading the way. She remembers that then, as now, it was lush and harboring, and that during festivals vibrant colors glittered across the seemingly infinite expanse—before there were walls—where land reshaped itself into water and water into forests and forests into clouds.

  Fiery specks flood her vision. Orange, cinnamon, and deep earthy red of the monastic cloths flutter among leaves and branches, calling to mind the brilliant swaths of autumn when she left Minneapolis several weeks ago, and Teera remembers in turn how struck she was by the fall season, its tropical tinges, when she and Amara arrived in America that October in 1980. The hues of one love simmer in another, she thinks.

  She realizes with a pang of gui
lt that before she was even aware she loved her father, her mother, loved another human being, she had loved a place—this land, which, in her innocence, she didn’t understand as defined by borders and geography, its relationship to other countries, only in the intimate sense of family, safety, and home. The world then contracted and expanded, nimble and borderless as her imagination. As she grew older, she learned of territories with clearly marked perimeters, often drawn and redrawn by wars and revolutions, by blood. Yet, as Teera takes these steps, she knows she has never stopped loving this place. Its people, its landscape. She has never let it go. She’s learned to embrace another as her home only because once she knew how it felt to be embraced by a land, to be rooted and safe.

  She heads toward the cluster of wooden dwellings, the monks’ private quarters, where, she was told, young women are not normally permitted to enter unless they are nhome—family of the ordained. In your case, though, it’s perfectly all right, the Venerable Kong Oul said when they spoke on the phone early this morning. Your reunion is long awaited. Teera found it curious that the abbot used the word “reunion” rather than “visit.” Did he know she’d come before? The two of you will have much to talk about, he told her, and then prophetically added, And you’ll know then what course you must take.

  What has the Old Musician revealed to the abbot? Did he speak of her father, their imprisonment in Slak Daek, how they had suffered together, what might have been their crimes? Or is she hoping for too much? Perhaps the Old Musician has nothing to offer her beyond the cryptic fragments he’s already shared in the letter, and those tired old instruments.

  But something nudges her. A thought, a feeling. No, even less than that. Some vague yearning she can’t begin to articulate.

  Teera spots the “cottage” the abbot has described for her, perplexed that he used so grand a name for this weather-beaten hovel squatting in the dirt, with its walls of thin wood planks crudely tacked together, leaving huge gaps in between. She looks from it to the pristine white stupa bearing her father’s name in gold lettering at the far end of the compound, then back at the cottage. Her heart flutters. She tells herself he’s waiting for her now inside that cramped, dank space. How can this be his home? How can it be anyone’s? Yet, in these past weeks she’s come to see all too clearly that to have any shelter at all separates you from the countless whose only claim to home is a corner of sidewalk or a small patch of public ground.

  Now, looking around the temple grounds, Teera questions the value of building stupas, or any such dwellings constructed for the dead, when the living lack the dignity of shelter, the privacy afforded by simple walls and a roof. She thinks of the street corner near her hotel where a family has set up shelter. Every time she goes out for her evening walk she encounters them—a young couple and their school-aged daughter. Last night the father had parked his cyclo against a lamppost so that his small daughter could do her schoolwork under the light. As it started to drizzle, the little girl pulled the clear plastic hood of the cyclo forward and clasped it in place with a clothespin, leaving open the pair of rectangular air holes cut in the sides like tiny windows. There, the girl cocooned herself inside the bubble-like sphere, poring over her schoolbook, arms around her backpack—a Clifford the Big Red Dog bag, the kind of item sold at the open-air market among piles of donated used clothes that have made their way from America. Teera has learned this is where cast-off belongings end up, unacceptable even to charity organizations like the Salvation Army and Goodwill. Leftover hand-me-downs for leftover lives.

  But the way the little girl wore the backpack on her chest, hugging it, made clear how much she cherished it. The bag doubled as her doll, and as she rocked back and forth, memorizing her lesson, Clifford bobbed up and down, ears flopping, nodding agreeably with the recited lesson, his once bright synthetic fur dulled by poverty but softened by ceaseless love.

  The child kept reading, even as the light from the lamppost grew dimmer in the gathering mists. Outside, her parents moved around the cyclo and fastened a blue tarp around its metal frame to create a space for themselves underneath. As Teera approached them, she stepped off the sidewalk, not wanting to trespass upon their private space, the sanctity of home however vagrant and lacking, and continued the rest of her evening stroll on the street.

  She pauses on the narrow footpath leading directly to the cottage. She wants to turn back, to run away again, feeling ridiculous and small-minded in her quest. What is it that she hopes to reclaim? Hasn’t her life, all she’s been able to rebuild in America, made up for what was lost and destroyed? What more could she demand when others have so little, almost nothing to live on?

  “Hello, sir!” a voice suddenly calls out, and she turns toward it. A young monk pokes his head from beneath a saffron robe hanging on a line between two bowed hibiscus saplings. Teera looks left and right only to realize that the “sir” was directed at her. She hesitates, unsure what language to respond with, but finally in English reciprocates, “Oh, hello there!—Sir,” she adds, almost an afterthought.

  This pleases her greeter immensely. He offers her a wide grin, made more comical by his shaven head and big elfish ears. He turns to another shadow beside him, the tethered saplings bowing even deeper from the tugs and pulls of the laundered robe, and suddenly another young novice pops up, exclaiming, “How are you I’m fine sankyou sir!” The two giggle, covering their mouths with their hands, clearly delighted that they get to experiment on a complete stranger. “I’m fine sankyou sir!” the first echoes, and again they both giggle.

  Everywhere she goes, Teera witnesses this—the easy laughter, the abundant lightness. When she gives the proper greetings for monks, they promptly duck back into hiding, so now she sees only their silhouettes behind the transparent glow of the saffron robe, like two characters in a shadow-puppet play. “Khmer Amerikan!” they exclaim in hushed excitement. “Khmer Anaekajun!” She’s heard this repeatedly since her arrival, a term that seems to convey, One of us . . . but not quite. Teera couldn’t have imagined that in her own country, where everyone looks like her, she’d be labeled again and again an outsider. It unsettles her.

  Suddenly she is standing in front of the cottage. Her heart thumps, and she feels the odd sensation of being a child again, loitering in front of her father’s music room, straining to hear if he was practicing behind the closed door. How did she get there? How has she come here?

  Again, Teera is struck by the collapsibility of time and space, the melding of worlds and selves, and before she can work out how to announce her arrival—whether to call out a greeting or rap on the frame, as there’s no door to speak of—the burlap curtain on the doorway parts.

  He stands before her. A shadow mangled and maimed, a patch over one eye, a scar across his face. The contour of a rivulet drawn by tears. I know not how love chooses who and why— Why I see infinity in your eyes . . .

  She catches her breath, stunned, suddenly remembering. I dream of an alternate existence, a world parallel to this for you and me . . . where birth’s not a moment but eternity.

  Finding her voice, she struggles. “I—” The large sun hat held to her chest trembles. “I am . . .”

  “Suteera,” he murmurs. “Yes, I know.”

  There’s no place even to invite her to sit, not a single piece of furniture besides the bamboo bed. Even if there were, even if he could afford something, arrange somehow for it to be brought to him, where would he put it? The cottage perhaps has room in one corner for a small bamboo chair and table, the collapsible kind sold on street corners and sidewalks. But a chair alone, he recalls from his time wandering among the city’s homeless, costs at least ten American dollars, more than he’s had in years. There wasn’t much he could’ve arranged beforehand to prepare for this visit. He can barely arrange himself, the placement of his heart, in these past hours since the Venerable Kong Oul came to offer him the news. I’ve just got off the telephone! the old monk relayed excitedly, abandoning his usual pious calm. The gods have gran
ted you the reunion you’ve so longed for! The Old Musician’s immediate unthinking response was, You were on the phone with the gods? The abbot let out a riotous laugh. No, my friend, Miss Suteera! She’s in Cambodia—in Phnom Penh! His heart stopped then, for how long, he’s not sure, but when he became aware of it again, it was pounding inside his chest. She came. She’s here, in this same city. Now she’s inside his cottage. Right in front of him. Not a dream but a vision nonetheless.

  For the first interminable seconds, he shuffles about in the tight half-lit space, picking one thing up and setting another down. He’d like to offer her tea, but he has only a single chipped cup, the same one he himself drinks out of every day, the inside stained dark brown, its surface spidered with cracks. Perhaps Dr. Narunn will come by and he can then oblige his young friend to aid in the hosting. But, he remembers, the physician is leaving today—might’ve already left. He chastises himself, You old fool. He should’ve had the foresight to borrow a cup and saucer from the temple. Or at least a clean glass to offer her the cool rainwater from his cistern. It’s especially sweet and refreshing after the sustained downpours of the past months.

  He pauses, backtracks, and scoffs, Rainwater?—Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll get her sick. He stands ramrod in his spot, wondering if she can hear him, if inadvertently he’s spoken aloud. He feels her gaze piercing him, traveling the length of his scar, resting on the black eye patch Dr. Narunn has given him, as if trying to see past it. He dares not meet her eyes, look into those dark, lash-laden depths. “May I offer you something to drink?” The words fly from his mouth in perfect-pitched American English, surprising them both. They are still for a moment. Then she looks away. He is mortified by what he’s uttered—the language, the lavish offer, the carelessness of his tongue. As if he could give whatever she desires! Old fool.