Three Flames

by Alan Lightman

  There were other night sounds as well. Mr. Noeum and his wife were shouting at each other as usual. Across the way, their neighbor Mr. Em was rambling around his two rooms, laying out sweet sticky rice to feed the ghost in his house. Cousin Nimol had once seen that particular ghost and swore it was Mr. Em’s deceased aunt Menghun, but Mr. Em vociferously denied it. He wouldn’t be caught dead giving anything to Aunt Menghun, he said, and certainly not sweet sticky rice.

  Kamal put his hands over his ears and tried to sleep. He often found himself occupied with Sophea during her visits home, but something felt different this time. Perhaps the ugly comments made by the two drunks had disturbed him more than he’d realized. This visit, Sophea somehow seemed more glamorous, more mysterious. He’d heard her speaking on her handphone in English, and in Thai. He remembered how he used to see her as a little girl helping her mother make cakes for the monks. He remembered her washing clothes in the river. When she got older, he sometimes talked to her in the market or at birth ceremonies. By age eighteen, she was the most beautiful girl in Praek Banan and miraculously still unmarried. Then she had suddenly disappeared. It was rumored that she’d gone to Phnom Penh to earn money to pay back a family debt. There were other rumors. Some people said that she lived in a guesthouse in Bangkok. Others said that she was the mistress of a wealthy Korean businessman. A year went by. Then another. Her parents accepted the fat envelopes of money she sent them each month, but they would not allow her to set foot in their house again. In the second year she was gone, her uncle Sovann offered her a place in his house near the pagoda. But Sophea came back to the village only for occasional visits. Each time, she brought gifts. Beautiful shoes for the girls. Bottles of French wine that people studied and put on their shelves but never dared open. Fragile crystal glasses that looked like they might shatter if anyone sneezed. After a week’s visit, Sophea would drive away in her white Land Rover.

  As Kamal lay on his sleeping mat thinking of Sophea, a warmth spread through him like palm wine. Why had he never tried to contact her after she’d left the village? Why had he never talked to her on her visits home? And suddenly he knew that all of these years he’d been waiting to marry her.

  The next evening, after dinner, Kamal spoke to his parents about the girl. It was mid-April and ninety degrees even at night. Drenched in sweat, Kamal held a wet cloth to his face as he talked. His father sprawled at the wood table, shirtless as usual, attempting to tally up the meager number of fifty-kilo bags of rice they’d filled the past week. Pich had no facility for math, but he knew the harvest this year wasn’t good. He slammed down his pencil when he grasped the meaning of his son’s faltering words.

  “Are you my son? Are you crazy? That girl is nothing but a fancy srey bar. She’s a whore.” Pich stood up and began pacing the small room. Although a short man, his head struck the one light bulb dangling on a wire from the ceiling, and shadows swung back and forth across the room.

  “Please, Husband,” said Ryna. “Ouv Wea should take care what he says.” Ryna put aside her sewing needles and glanced anxiously at her youngest daughter, Sreypov, who was cleaning the dishes with a scrub brush and a tin can of water.

  “Take care?” shouted Pich. “It should be Kamal who takes care, Kamal more dumb than a cow.”

  At the sound of her father’s booming voice, Nita, who had been nursing her baby girl, appeared from behind the dangling sheet that partitioned off the women’s area of the house. Thida ceased massaging her mother’s back.

  “That girl has been the whore of rich men,” said Pich. “More than one.”

  “She has a sweet heart,” said Ryna. “Look how she’s helped her family. They would have lost everything. What would have happened to Botum and Bunrouen? And Kanya and Devi and little Seyha?”

  “Are you crazy too?” hollered Pich. “Do you want our son marrying a whore?” Thida stood up and went behind the women’s sheet.

  “You probably also think you’re going to move to Phnom Penh,” Pich said to Kamal. “Live with that whore in the big city.”

  Kamal looked over at his mother. For a short while, it appeared that she would challenge her husband, as she occasionally did, but she only sighed and began smoothing out the shirt she’d just made for the Khmer New Year festivities. She turned to Kamal, sitting on the floor next to the car battery. “Dear son, there are many girls you can marry. Lina and Rany’s daughter. Dara’s daughter. Nary and Falla’s daughter. You’re good with your hands. You’re handsome. And I’m not the only one saying that.” Kamal’s mother had said exactly the same thing many times in the last few years, changing only the names of the available young women. He knew that she loved him, but she didn’t know his heart.

  While his mother was suggesting brides, Kamal pictured in his mind how Sophea had looked that morning at the market as she placed various items in her basket. Her hands were as delicate and smooth as the hands of an apsara dancer, not like the hands of the other girls in the village. And he remembered the proud way that she carried herself, undaunted by village gossip. He had almost gone to speak to her then. Surely she must have noticed his stare, but she had just flipped her hair to one side and walked on to the next stall to purchase some fresh river fish. Around her left ankle was a thin silver chain with several turquoise stones. Kamal was willing to admit that Sophea might be getting her money by sleeping with one or two rich men in Phnom Penh. But hadn’t she done so to help her family, as his mother said? Was that wrong? She’d kept her dignity. Kamal could see that. He knew unmarried girls here in Praek Banan who would tell any lie to get what they wanted. And some of them weren’t virgins either. Sophea was dignified and honest, and she had wanted to know the world. What was the sinfulness in that?

  “I don’t need to hear any more about this whore,” said Pich. He sat down heavily on the bamboo floor across from Kamal. For a moment, Kamal feared that his father would strike him. “It looks like we might have only twenty or twenty-five extra bags of rice this year,” said Pich. “Half what we had last harvest. We’ll sell them to Duy when he comes around in his truck.”

  Kamal nodded. Somehow he must talk to her, he thought to himself, tell her of his admiration and intentions. But how? And then what? He tried to imagine the future, but he could not get past this moment, with the sound of his father’s voice in his ears.

  “Duy will cheat us like he did last year,” said Pich. “Then he’ll sell our rice to his friends in Vietnam for a nice profit. But what can you do.” Pich stood up. “I’m sleeping.” He picked at the dirt under his fingernails. Then he climbed barefoot down the rickety wood ladder and lay on his sleeping mat in the storage area below the house. Disturbed, the chickens squawked and scattered in all directions. Kamal looked down between the bamboo poles of the floor and watched as his father performed his nightly ritual of wrapping his checkered krama twice around his neck for good luck. Nearby, in the slatted light, was his own mat, their motos, and their two oxen tied to a wood post. He and his father had been sleeping below ever since Nita escaped Mr. Noth and moved back with the family. Kamal figured there was one benefit to the new sleeping arrangement. Pich didn’t have to call out to Ryna for help getting up the ladder when he returned home drunk in the middle of the night, waking up the neighbors and embarrassing the family. Long ago, Kamal had vowed that he would never be like his father. Yet here he was, a farmer, working on his father’s farm, sleeping next to his father on their straw mats. He looked at his hands, the hands of a farmer. For now.

  “Brother, don’t feel sad,” whispered Thida. She had come back into the room and sat beside Kamal. “You’ll find a wife. Rany is rich. And his daughter is not so bad to look at.” Kamal was staring at the muffled shadow cast by the hanging bulb and was turning a kernel of corn over and over in the palm of his hand. “What are you thinking, dear brother?” said Thida. She was the daughter closest in age to Kamal, the daughter who helped her mother with the cooking and cleaning while Sreypov studied her school lessons and Nita took ca
re of her baby. Thida was also the daughter who knew most about the affairs between women and men. “You’re thinking of Sophea, aren’t you, dear brother.”

  Kamal nodded. “I can’t bear it,” he whispered.

  “I’ll take a letter to her for you,” said Thida.

  Kamal rose and held his sister’s hand. He hesitated, overwhelmed by her offer. “I am being grateful to you for the rest of my life,” he said. “Father will change his mind. I think he will. He’s worried now about the bad harvest. I’ll speak more strongly to him next week. If he can just meet Sophea, if he can talk to her . . .”

  A sequence of possible events began forming in Kamal’s head. Sophea would receive his letter, and she would understand his feelings for her, and also his worthiness. He would show her that he was a modern man, who knew about more than just farming. He’d learned to use the Internet in Praek Khamu. He could talk to her about palaces in Thailand and the plains of Australia. Pich would eventually give his approval after he understood that Sophea was not what he thought. After getting married, Kamal and Sophea would travel together. He wanted to see Phnom Penh again, and Sihanoukville, and even Bangkok. Surely, Sophea had been to Bangkok. What a strange and wonderful place it must be. She would show him Bangkok. And then, perhaps, they would open a shop in Phnom Penh. Clothing? Printing? It hardly mattered. Undoubtedly, Sophea would want to stay in Phnom Penh. They would live in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh! Although only ninety kilometers, the place seemed as far away as the moon. Kamal thought of the one time he’d been to Phnom Penh, five years ago, to visit an uncle who needed help in his print shop. The city was even more awesome than the stories Kamal had heard, with wide paved streets and blinking lights and hundreds of cars and tall buildings made of metal and glass and shops and stores one after the other and people crowding the streets as thick as new shoots of grass. And the constant explosion of buzzing and honking, and the grinding of thousands of invisible machines. Uncle had introduced Kamal to his friends. They worked in banks and computer stores. Mr. An was employed in the Ministry of Mines and Energy and wore a suit and tie. “Shake their hands but don’t say anything,” Uncle advised. The first day, Uncle had shown Kamal how to use a toilet. It was in the back of his shop. Kamal worked for his uncle for a month and learned how to take orders and write up receipts. Each night, he slept with Uncle’s grandson in a bed, a soft cushion high off the floor. He remembered exactly what the street looked like from the window of Uncle’s house, the tiny market on the corner with the blue awning and the lady sitting on a white stool selling fried pork. How often he could see that little market in his mind.

  The thought of Phnom Penh now filled Kamal with excitement, and dread. He looked at his hands again and saw the hands of a farmer. But that was the past. Sophea would show him the secrets of Phnom Penh. She would introduce him to interesting people, as his uncle had done. Kamal imagined himself an explorer, like Marco Polo, or like old Hok. But . . . how could he take care of his parents and sisters if he lived in Phnom Penh? Perhaps his father should sell the farm. Might he do it? The farm had been in the family for at least four generations. According to family legend, Pich’s grandfather had received the farm in a shadowy deal with a corrupt French official during the 1920s, but the farm may have been in the family even longer than that. All the family records had been lost during the Pol Pot time. Yes, they should sell the farm, Kamal decided. He could also send money home.

  With this flood of ideas and plans going through his head, Kamal climbed down the ladder and got on his sleeping mat without removing his clothes. As he lay there looking out toward the road, the posts of the front gate shone like white cloth in the light of the moon. That night Kamal dreamed that he and Sophea were in a boat drifting down the river. She reclined with her head in his lap, and her silky hair wrapped his waist like sweet loving arms.

  Sophea did not respond to his letter. Kamal sent a second letter, which his sister placed in the girl’s hand as she walked out of the pagoda one day. She didn’t reply to that one either.

  At Thida’s advice, Kamal asked Ming Oeun, the matchmaker, to speak to Sophea’s parents. Oeun was a talkative woman, the wife of the village chief, with a good stock of magic beads she employed for her missions. However, she had scarcely begun her long speech when Sophea’s parents announced that the girl was no longer their daughter. Talk to the uncle, they said. The matchmaker then went to Sovann’s house near the pagoda. It was mid-morning, the best time of day for such business. “With gracious respect, and all due courtesy, I am coming to your door on behalf of Kamal,” said Ming Oeun, and she vigorously rubbed the beads hidden in her hand. “I understand,” said the uncle. Sovann would have been a handsome man had he not been missing most of his teeth. When he spoke, his voice made a whistling sound as the air forced its way through his fractured mouth. “But I’m afraid that I cannot make decisions for my niece. Do you know the girl? She has her own mind.”

  Ming Oeun relayed the news to Kamal and returned the riel notes he had advanced her for the job. “Dear boy, you will have to make your intentions known directly to her.” Then Ming Oeun paused. “After all, she’s already twenty-three years old and knows the world.” Although Oeun was a kindhearted woman, who had happily facilitated a great many matches, Kamal heard in her voice a note of reproach, perhaps a sly comment on the manner in which Sophea had amassed her great wealth.

  On the last day of the Khmer New Year observance, Kamal spotted Sophea standing alone beneath a banyan tree. She wore a blue silk dress with a white silk blouse and a gold-colored collar around her neck, and her hair was folded in a bun held together by a wreath of white flowers. With her head gently tilted to one side, as if listening to the monks, she seemed to be in a world of her own even though all her relatives were only meters away, kneeling in the pagoda. And there was a sadness about her that Kamal had never seen before but that burrowed itself deeply into his soul, and the sadness and the perfume in the air made him feel like he were floating far beyond the village. He had to talk to her, now. She would be returning to Phnom Penh in the morning.

  Stiff in his ceremonial clothes and perspiring in the heat, he walked toward her. She looked up, and a strand of her hair came loose and fell upon the white curve of her neck.

  “Bong Kamal,” she said. As soon as she spoke, he realized that he had no notion of what he would say to her. She asked him if he was enjoying the celebration. He said something in reply. She remarked that she had offered a prayer for her parents even though they wouldn’t speak to her, and also a prayer for her deceased grandfathers and grandmothers. While she talked, she turned a silver bracelet around and around on her wrist.

  “Sophea, did you get my letters?”

  She smiled. “How many were there?”

  “Two. There were two.”

  She gave a small laugh and tossed her head, and another strand of hair slipped from its flower clasp and dropped to her shoulder. At that moment, her uncle and aunt and cousins came out of the pagoda with plates of kralan cakes, and she joined them under a white canopy. Kamal stood for a while next to the banyan tree, his thoughts a confusion of odd angles. Then he joined his own family in the pagoda.

  That night, Thida whispered to him, “Maybe she’s not the right girl for you, dear brother.”

  “Please do not say such things,” said Kamal. They were in the toolshed, and he was sharpening the blade of the plow. Planting season was one month away. “I have not shown her my heart, and my strength.” Despite his failures so far, he was more determined than ever. He would prove his worthiness. For starters, he would begin going to the pagoda every morning at dawn, before he and his father went with their oxcart to the fields. If any spirits were about, they would see his devotion and come to his aid.

  In mid-May, planting began. Kamal and Pich started with rice. In the coming weeks, they planted kasava, corn, and cucumbers. When the rice seedlings were twenty centimeters tall, an intense yellow velvety green, it was time for transplanting. Transplanti
ng was always tedious work and murderous on a farmer’s back, even for Kamal. They had to stoop down and lean over, dig their trowels into the mud, and scoop up the young rice plants one by one, careful not to damage the roots. Then carry the plants to the new field and bury them in the mud. After two days, Kamal’s back hurt so much that he couldn’t sleep at night, but the work went on for a week. His father had his own solution for the pain. He drank palm wine every night until he was beyond drunk. Even then, Pich moaned during the night, sat up on his mat every hour, walked around, and lay down again in a stupor.

  In the fields, Kamal and Pich worked side by side in silence. A number of times, Kamal wanted to talk to his father about Sophea and the life he imagined with her, but he couldn’t think of the right words to say. Pich had never been much of a talker himself. On the fifth day of transplanting, after a lunch of rice and bits of pork, Kamal was digging up a plant when he heard a scream. He looked up to see his father writhing on the ground. “Father,” he shouted. Pich groaned. His eyes were closed. “Are you all right?” Kamal said. He kneeled down over his father and touched his arm. Pich waved him away. He tried to stand up, then crumpled to the ground again. “Father.” “I’m all right,” said Pich. Kamal kneeled down again and held his father’s hand. “Twisted ankle,” said Pich. He tried to stand up again but couldn’t. “You shouldn’t work any more today,” said Kamal. “I need to work,” said Pich. “You need to rest,” said Kamal. Kamal bent over and picked up his father in his arms and carried him to the oxcart. He was surprised at how light his father was, like one bag of rice.