Three Flames

by Alan Lightman

  “Yes, she’s clever,” said Pich. That was the first time in her life that Nita had ever heard her father say she was clever.

  Lina was angry at Nita for planning to marry a man who lived far away. She said she’d probably never see Nita again. Battambang was on another planet, she said. But what did Lina know, thought Nita. Lina had never been outside Kandal. Neither had she. But she knew a lot of things that her mother had told her. “What will happen to me?” said Lina. “I can’t go anywhere. I have no money. You’ll eat good food and ride in your husband’s car, and he’ll take you to shops in Battambang City. How did you have such good luck?”

  Nita replied that she’d rather shovel cow dung for the rest of her life than get married to Mr. Noth. Lina began shouting about how Nita didn’t know about anything except her school lessons, and then Lina started in on her own rotten luck and how her husband was not making much money on the fishing boats in Malaysia. She started crying and put her arms around Nita. Lina did love her, Nita thought to herself. She told Lina things she didn’t tell anyone else. She had told Lina when she had her first period.

  Sreypov, too, was angry at Nita. Now she would have no sisters to play with. “Can I come with you to Battambang?” she asked. They were sitting under an acacia tree, watching some village men set up the wedding tent. Guests and distant cousins would begin arriving the next day. “You need to stay in school,” said Nita. “I can go to school in Battambang,” said Sreypov. “I want to come with you.” “You need to stay here,” said Nita. “You need to go to sixth grade, then seventh grade, then eighth grade, all the way to the twelfth grade. And then . . .” Sreypov fidgeted with a fresh scab on her knee. “Will Father let me?” she said. “Of course,” said Nita. Sreypov, although only eleven, was an observant child and looked at her sister as if not believing a word. She turned and ran toward Bayon’s dry good store and then on toward the fields, far from the wedding tent and her father and any prospective husbands.

  The night before the last day of the wedding, Ryna had a private talk with her daughter, behind the sheet where the female children slept. Clothes hung over the sideways bamboo pole. Nita had already packed her own clothes, along with her glam photos of Pich Sophea and Sokun Nisa, which Mr. Noth said she could take with her to Battambang.

  “Sweet daughter, mi-oun,” said Ryna with tears in her eyes. “Listen to me. You have a new family now.” Ryna cupped Nita’s face. “It’s your job to keep peace in your new family. Never complain. Always keep the three flames.”

  Nita had been numb during the entire wedding ceremony. She understood very well what was expected of her, and she dreaded it. “You don’t have to tell me, Mae,” she said.

  “Mi-oun, I’m telling you again now.”

  “I know the three flames,” said Nita. “Never take family problems outside the house. Never forget what you and Father have done for me. Always serve my husband and be respectful of him.” Nita turned and looked straight at her mother, straight into her eyes. “Did you really want me to stay in school, Mae?”

  “You’re married now,” said Ryna. She held her daughter’s hand and whispered, “Don’t be shy tomorrow night. You might feel uncomfortable. If you bleed, it’s normal. Your husband will be happy that you’re bleeding.” Then Ryna gave her daughter a necklace, which her mother had given to her. It had a tear-shaped gold pendant, encircling a plant with six leaves.

  Even in Mr. Noth’s car, it took seven hours to drive to Battambang. Nita watched the rice fields go by, the little markets and shops on the side of the road, the motos and trucks and oxcarts plodding along.

  She began living with her husband’s aunt in Ang Chrum, fifty kilometers from Battambang City. Auntie’s house was the house where Mr. Noth grew up. Originally, it had been a two-room wood hut on stilts, like most of the other houses in Ang Chrum, but over the years, as Mr. Noth grew more affluent, he’d built a beautiful foundation and a new roof, added rooms and modern appliances, and drilled his own water well. In the back of the house, where there had once been a toolshed, there was now a garage where Mr. Noth could park his car. A garden sprawled in the space between the house and the garage, and the entire property was punctuated with mango trees. Most of the neighbors were farmers. Their houses, shaded with acacias, were situated along little paths off the wide dirt road that served as the main street of the village. The path leading to Mr. Noth’s house he had widened and paved with gravel.

  It was April when Nita moved in, the hottest month of the year. Strange things happened in April. Nobody slept well. Ghosts could be heard tiptoeing about in search of water to quench their thirst. Cows broke from their tethers and went wandering through the village. Chickens magically escaped from their coops and congregated in the pagoda.

  Sweating heavily, Nita unpacked her trunk and sat without moving under the fan in the kitchen. She didn’t mind suffering in the heat. In fact, it seemed right that she should suffer her first months in this new place. She accepted the blame for what had happened to her, the drastic change in her future. If she’d been more clear in her wishes or spoken differently to her father or been a more loving daughter . . .

  Mr. Noth stayed in the house the first two days and two nights and then drove off in his silver car. He traveled a lot and came home only a few days a month. “I want you to be happy here,” he said. “Not like in that garbage dump you lived in before.”

  Mr. Noth also owned a second house, in Battambang City, a mansion-size house with an interior garden, cool slate floors, and countertops made of marble imported from Italy. But he told Nita that he wanted her to live with his aunt in the countryside so she would be safe.

  Nita never knew what her husband did when he was gone. Once she heard him talking on his handphone to somebody in Chinese, and another time in Vietnamese. Auntie said she shouldn’t ask.

  Every time Mr. Noth came to his house in Ang Chrum, he brought Nita new clothes and beautiful shoes, like the film stars wore. “Don’t wear those shoes on the road,” he said. “You’ll get them dirty.”

  “I’ll wear them only with you,” Nita said, and that made him smile. Mr. Noth also gave her an expensive wristwatch he’d bought in Phnom Penh. He never gave her any money. The money he gave to his aunt.

  When Mr. Noth would arrive for a visit, he liked to watch Nita dress up in the new clothes, starting with the padded bras. He’d say, “You look sexy like that,” and take a big drag from his cigarette. While he was looking at her, he’d limp over to the cabinet and turn on the radio, so that his aunt wouldn’t hear them from her room. Then he’d take off her clothes, piece by piece. He’d take off his own clothes. He had a hairy back. It never lasted more than ten minutes, what he did to her. When he was finished, he’d kiss her and ask, “Did I hurt you?” Usually he did hurt her, but she wouldn’t say anything. He didn’t intentionally hurt her, she decided. There was always a certain smell when they did it. Often, Mr. Noth had that same odor when he came home after being away. Nita figured that her husband might have girlfriends. But he’d chosen her for his wife. That meant a lot.

  They slept together in a wide, modern bed he’d shipped from Thailand. Lying side by side with him, she could smell his shaving cream, the oil he used in his thinning hair, the alcohol and tobacco on his breath. Sometimes, she would wake in the middle of the night and feel his arm around her. Did that mean he loved her? Lina had once said that she didn’t love her husband, and that he didn’t love her. According to Lina, love wasn’t important in a marriage. What was important, said Lina, was having a safe home with not too much fighting and a husband who wasn’t drunk all the time. Nita never saw Mr. Noth drunk. And he never hit her.

  Aunt Champey had red-tinted hair and very white fake teeth. To Nita, it seemed that Auntie thought of herself as about thirty years old, but she was fifty-four. She wore nice clothes, but far too tight for her plump body, and jewelry even if she wasn’t going out of the house. Auntie mostly just watched TV in her room.

  Auntie employed a
maid named Chakrya. Auntie said to Nita, “Daughter, kon srey, you’ll be happy. Chakrya is here to make our life easy. And we pay her plenty. Just remember that she works for me. Anything you want done, you ask me first. OK?” Nita nodded. Nita looked at Chakrya, who was the same age as her, and knew she could never ask Chakrya to do any chores for her whether Auntie gave her approval or not.

  Nita asked: “What would you like me to help you with, Auntie?”

  “You’re my nephew’s wife,” said Auntie. “You don’t need to do anything around here. You’re a lucky, lucky girl.” Auntie was peeling the spiny skins off some rambutans and plopping them into her mouth one after another. “You know, my nephew is a big man.”

  “I know,” said Nita.

  That night, when Nita had just come out of the shower, Auntie plunged into the bathroom without knocking and stood there looking at her naked body. Looked at her as if she were inspecting peaches at the market. Nita covered herself with a towel. Without speaking, Auntie left.

  “You’re a lucky, lucky girl,” Auntie repeated the next day. “Not like me when I was your age. You can do whatever you want here. You hardly have to lift a finger.” But there wasn’t much Nita could do without any money. Whenever she asked Aunt Champey for money, Auntie said, “What do you need money for?” So during the day, Nita studied what schoolbooks she’d managed to bring from Praek Banan, sitting at a table in her bedroom, embarrassed when Chakrya would come in to clean. When she finished reading all of her books, she began reading them again. In the late afternoons, when Chakrya had to go home to help her mother, Nita cooked dinner for herself and Auntie. Auntie ate in her room, watching TV, and instructed Nita on exactly how she wanted her rice cooked and how she wanted the food put on her tray and when she wanted it delivered.

  Everyone in the village took it for granted that Nita was content being married to Mr. Noth and living in the nice house. And, in some ways, she was content. Her life was easy. Certainly, she was better off than Lina or Chenda or Sreyden. But she was not living the life of her dreams. That, her father had taken away from her. When she thought of the future, she couldn’t imagine living this life forever. Something must change, but she didn’t know what. After a year or so, she might ask Mr. Noth if she could attend the high school in Banth Chey. That became her new dream.

  One quiet night when Mr. Noth was home from his travels, after midnight, he began telling Nita the story of how his mother had died from some kind of bacterial infection. It got into her heart, the doctor said, but no one was sure. They paid a lot of money to that doctor, said Mr. Noth. He was a Vietnamese doctor and cheated them. Then Mr. Noth talked about his father and how one morning he was gone from the house, just disappeared, and never came back and never wrote one letter and never made one phone call. “I remember him so well,” said Mr. Noth, closing his eyes. “I can see him this minute in my mind. I can see him clearly. He could lift me up in the air, even when I was nine years old.” Mr. Noth stopped talking for a moment and looked at Nita. “I was his oldest son.” Then Mr. Noth starting crying, right there with his head on Nita’s lap. She stroked his cheek. “I’ll be a good father,” he said.

  “Bong, don’t cry,” said Nita.

  “Do you love me?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love me?” he asked again, as if he didn’t believe her.

  “Yes.” Nita wanted to love him. Despite all that had happened and all that had been taken from her, she wanted to love him. Maybe she didn’t know what love was. She stroked his cheek and watched him fall asleep.

  Every night, Auntie expected Nita to rub her back for a full hour. She would be lying on the floor naked from the waist up, watching television while Nita rubbed. There was one cream to keep her back from hurting, and another cream to whiten her skin. It was hot in her room, but Auntie wouldn’t let Nita open a window. She said she didn’t want anybody looking at her naked.

  “A lot of girls wanted to marry my nephew,” she said while Nita rubbed her back. “Make clever babies for him. That’s what you can do for him.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Nephew deserves it. Look at everything that he’s given us.” Auntie closed her eyes and let out a contented sigh. “I used to be beautiful,” she said. “Before the Pol Pot time.” Then she got up and waddled over to her dresser, her bare belly drooping in great rolls over her sarong and her armpits stinking, and got out a youthful photograph of herself. “The boys. The boys . . .” She didn’t finish. Then she lay down again and told Nita to get back to work massaging her.

  Once, while massaging Auntie late at night, Nita blurted out that she wanted to go back to school. “What?” Auntie turned over and laughed at her, as if she’d just said that a cow had given birth to a pig. At that moment, Nita realized that she had hated Auntie from the first moment she saw her.

  After Nita rubbed her back at night, Auntie would sometimes go to the corner of her room where she kept her green Buddha. While Auntie was praying, Nita clutched her mother’s necklace and thought about when she might see her again. Sometimes, she imagined escaping the house at night, when Auntie was sleeping, and taking the bus home to see her mother. But it was so far, and she had no money. Other times, Nita thought that if she went back to her village, her father would just put her to work on the farm again. Mr. Noth was not such a bad husband. He didn’t beat her. He protected her. He put his arm around her when they were sleeping together. On occasion, she found herself waiting for him to come home, even waiting for him to touch her. When he called to say that he’d be home in a couple of days, she began preparing fish amok for him, a fancy dish he’d first eaten in a restaurant in Battambang City. He always arrived at night, and she would look out the window through the bougainvillea, searching for the tiny dots of the headlights far away, winding through the rice fields.

  Mr. Noth’s house in Battambang City was located in Sangkat Nary, in a neighborhood with other mansions, and there was always a guard at the front gate who greeted him with the high Sampeah reserved for royalty and monks. The guard, a kid of about seventeen, wore a uniform several sizes too large for his body and was always half asleep from the long hours. When Mr. Noth’s silver car drove up, the boy would jump up to attention with his clothes bagging about, quickly sweep the pavement before Mr. Noth stepped out, and open the door. Mr. Noth acted as if he didn’t even see the boy, but he’d leave a thousand-riel note on the hood of the car. When Mr. Noth took Nita to Battambang City, they never stayed overnight in his big house there. It was only for business, he said. Mr. Noth would park his car, and then he and Nita would walk along the wide concrete boulevard. Mr. Noth liked to go into the shops—the stores that sold carved wood furniture, the clothing shops pretending to import items from abroad, the moto repair shops with boys welding and sweating in the heat, the printing shops and the phone shops, the tourist hotels with the white columns. The owners all came out and shook Mr. Noth’s hand. He would joke around with his friends for a few minutes, sharing his expensive 555 cigarettes, and then touch Nita’s shoulder and say, “This is my wife.” They would nod, but they never said a word to her.

  After six months, Mr. Noth let Nita take the bus to Battambang City by herself, once a week. It was an hour each way, but Nita didn’t mind. In the city, she’d sit at a table in one of the restaurants owned by Mr. Noth’s friends and get a free lunch. Afterward, she’d spend the afternoon at the Very Extraordinary Australian University of English, a two-room house with dirty floors and photographs of kangaroos. The VEAUE had books in both English and Khmer. Nita read parts of a book about Winston Churchill. She read an accounting book. She read about the ancient kingdom of Angkor, ten centuries ago.

  After Nita’s first year in Battambang, Auntie began asking her every month if she’d missed her period. Sometimes she asked her twice in the same week. “I’m not regular,” said Nita. “You’re not much of a wife,” Auntie said. “Nephew can get any girl. Do you understand?” As Auntie was talking, she looked a
t Nita like she was nothing, like she was just a body for Auntie’s nephew to use.

  Nita called Lina and told her that she couldn’t make a baby, weeping into the phone. “I’ve heard of girls who take two or three years,” said Lina. “Don’t give up.” “What can I do?” said Nita. “I don’t know what to do.” “If the spirits want you to have a baby,” said Lina, “you’ll have a baby.”

  Another year. Two years now in Battambang. The days merged together in an unending haze. It was April again, and Nita opened every window of the house in a feeble attempt to diminish the heat. That morning, she spent a long time in the shower, almost in a daze, washing her hair and sponging off her body, and then she stood under the cool water a long while longer. Only five minutes out of the shower, she was sweating again. Auntie sprawled snoring on her bed. Nita walked into the kitchen to cook rice, but it was too hot to cook, so she went outside under a mango tree with one of her books. It was even too hot to read. She couldn’t sit still, but as soon as she moved, she sweated more profusely. Mr. Noth was coming home that evening. Somehow, she managed to cook fish in the boiling kitchen. Later, that night, she looked for the headlights of her husband’s car until well past midnight. Finally, she lay down on her bed with the window wide open and a single sheet over her body.

  When she woke, in the dark, she felt as if she were on fire, and she was sweating through the sheet on her bed. As she slowly became further awake, she realized that she heard muffled voices outside. One voice was Mr. Noth’s. There was another, a girl’s voice. She got out of her bed and went to the window. It was a dark night, without a moon, but she could make out two figures. One was her husband. A moment later, Mr. Noth burst into their bedroom. “You’ll have to sleep in the spare bedroom tonight,” he said, hardly looking at her.

  “What?” said Nita. She was still not fully awake.