Music of the Ghosts

by Vaddey Ratner

  He stands up from his bamboo bed and, with one arm stretched out before him, lifts the burlap partition. He steps out into the morning, his eyes open now, and though he can barely make out the rows of monks chanting in the prayer hall, their saffron robes made more brilliant by the sunrise, he knows that their harmonized chanting will give his day solace.

  Above him, the wind sweeps through the trees, shaking loose the night’s residual rain, and he hears the drops hitting the bamboo trough attached to his cottage in an almost pentatonic succession. Or has she—his daughter, the lute in whose voice she now speaks—called out to him?

  What can the author of the letter tell her that he couldn’t or wouldn’t say from a distance? There has to be more to his shared history with her father than those instruments. He didn’t reveal his name, only the curious signature, Lokta Pleng at Wat Nagara—“the Old Musician at Nagara Temple”—at the bottom of the page, in a shaky, barely legible scrawl that contrasted with the neat, careful handwriting of the body of the letter, as if he’d grown old and tired in the course of composing it.

  “Yes, we’re going home,” the old couple in the seats next to her echo back and forth, squeezing each other’s hand.

  Home. They use the word so easily, savoring its single syllable like the taste of palm sugar remembered from long ago.

  Amara, in her final days, wasn’t so clear about where she wanted to be. I’d like to reincarnate here, she’d said in a moment of clarity between the morphine injections given to alleviate her pain. Here, in Minnesota, where snow covers and erases everything. Where the seasons forgive all our wrongs. Then later, in another moment, she cried out in anguish, Take me back, Teera. I want to be with the others. Let me die in Srok Khmer. This, of course, wasn’t possible. A mere three months after she’d been diagnosed with the cancer, Amara took her last breath. There was barely time to find a funeral home, let alone make arrangements to return to their homeland.

  At Wat Minnesotaram, where Teera has left the rest of Amara’s ashes in an urn, her aunt can slip back and forth between one existence and another. She imagines Amara’s ghost sitting in the prayer hall now, calm and collected in death as she’d been in life, neither accepting nor denying her passing but observing with her keen eye the irony of geography—that borrowed landscape of snowy winters and cornfields in which their tropical dream rose from a modest farmhouse into a glittering reality, a sanctuary of gold spires and ornately carved columns, safe from the threats of war and revolution.

  Teera leans her head back and closes her eyes. She should’ve never set foot on the plane. Now there’s no changing her mind.

  Slak Daek, the Old Musician had written in his letter. How long were he and her father in that chamber of torture together? What were their crimes? What had they done—been accused of? She’s read enough to know that out of the thousands of mass grave sites discovered across Cambodia, most were located at or close to the Khmer Rouge security prisons. In Kompong Thom Province alone, which the Old Musician mentioned in his letter as the location of Slak Daek, nearly twenty mass grave sites have been surveyed and are believed to contain the remains of more than 120,000 victims. In Kompong Cham, where Teera and the rest of her family finally ended up after their expulsion from Phnom Penh, sixty-one mass grave sites have been found, with close to 180,000 victims.

  In her obsession, her search to understand, Teera will read everything she can get her hands on, the latest findings, and when she comes across a photograph of the remains of the dead, always she wonders if some piece of her family is among the skulls and bones captured in the image. Often she’ll gaze at a fractured cranium, look into the hollows of eye sockets, with the unease that it’s not the living, the survivors, but the dead who bear witness, their vision unabated, reaching across time, seeing the violence committed, now and again, their warning unheard. Unheeded.

  Tightness fills the small space between her brows. Teera pinches her skin to release it. When she opens her eyes again, the low ceiling of the aircraft cabin tilts left and right, and she feels herself whirling in confusion. How much did her father suffer? How did he die? Did they shoot him from behind? Was he allowed to run? Or did they tie his hands and ankles? There were other ways to destroy a person, she remembers. Other methods more effective, more efficient. In his final moments, did her father think of the family? Of her? Or was his killer’s face the last he remembered?

  She doesn’t know why she bothers with such useless queries. They’re like holes in a moth-eaten mat, and when she peers into them, they lead only to greater voids.

  Teera feels a hand on her arm. She looks up and sees the flight attendant smiling at her. The young woman reminds her to bring her seat to an upright position. The plane has begun its descent into Phnom Penh International Airport. Around her, the Cambodians chatter away in anticipation of the landing. She is suddenly aware that sweat is trickling down the sides of her face. She wipes it away with the base of her palm. She turns toward the window.

  A terrain of slender sugar palms and straw huts comes into view, desolate and scarred, the earth a deep saffron color. For some reason, maybe because of the Angkor advertisement she came across earlier, Teera expects to see more green, to be greeted by a lush tropical landscape of coconuts and teaks, emerald rice paddies, lakes and ponds filled with lotus and water lily, rivers embroidered with winged sampans and palm canoes with prows like beaks of birds. Instead, what lies below resembles a battleground, pockmarked by dark-water holes and bomb-crater-like gashes. A fractured geography.

  What can it tell her? What lies beneath those patches of gray and brown? What secrets does this wounded earth hold for her that she doesn’t already know? Does it conceal in its crevices her father’s dying scream, his shattered ideals and dreams, evidence of his alleged crime, the possibility of his redemption, as well as her own?

  The plane dips left, dropping in altitude. The city comes into sharper focus. “That’s Phnom Penh?” someone says, evidently disappointed. “It looks like . . . like nothing.”

  The city slips in and out of vision in the framed perspective of the small window. It’s nothing like what Teera has come to expect of a city. Even from this bird’s-eye view, it looks more like a rural town than the capital of a country. Her eyes scan the city’s topography, looking for the golden temples and red-tile roofs from the 1960s National Geographic features she pored over time and again as a university student, scouring for evidence of her history, the fragments of her home and family. All she discerns now is architectural incongruity, the remnants of prewar edifices patched together with newer, grayer blocks.

  The plane tilts right, and Teera catches the glints of a gold-painted rooftop in the distance along a river. Could it be the Royal Palace? And the river—is it the Tonle Sap?

  Images of the old Phnom Penh suddenly flood her mind—the layered steeple of the Independence Monument rising out of its circular foundation like the mauve flame of an immense candle; Wat Phnom shimmering in the afternoon sun; the palace grounds dotted with glittering halls and carved pavilions, resembling, she always thought when she was little, a celestial city; the Tonle Sap River brimming with monsoon rains.

  The plane swoops down, then touches ground with a light bump. Teera’s heart skips a beat. Next to her, the old woman weeps. “We’re home,” she tells her husband, taking his hand, and he, in return, cups his over hers, fighting back the tears rimming his eyes, his chin trembling.

  Teera presses her forehead hard against the window, feeling helpless in the presence of such exposed sentiments. Over the years, she’s learned to blanket her feelings in the rhythm of another’s language. Even her name has taken on a more pronounceable disguise. Teera instead of Suteera. She’s an American. This is no longer her home.

  As the plane makes its way smoothly along the runway, her heart lurches, banging against her chest. Again, she clutches her oversize shoulder bag to still herself. Inside are the valuables—her passport, some cash and a couple of credit cards, the small w
ooden box of Amara’s ashes, and the Old Musician’s letter.

  My dear young lady, I don’t know how to properly begin this letter. She’s read it so many times she can recall it word for word. There is so much to say . . . It isn’t a long letter, but the empty spaces between the lines resonate with inexpressible sadness, their parallel sorrows. I knew your father. She imagines his pen poised at an angle as he paused in search of the next word, the next sentence, while his mind leapt over countless things he wanted to tell her. He and I were . . . The words were crossed out, a single straight line running through them, as if the mistake was immutable, impossible to obliterate or retract by a new beginning. Teera was touched by its honesty, its self-revelation when she first read it. We were in Kompong Thom together during the last year of Pol Pot’s regime, in Sala Slak Daek. A prison. How I survived such a place, I do not know. Why I survived at all is a question that has plagued me until now . . .

  The plane slows, gliding parallel to the terminal building, its reflection undulating in the windowpanes. Alas, I am an old man, I shall confront death soon enough.

  Teera feels the gears shift and the aircraft coming to a full stop. I don’t know how much time is left, or if it is already too late . . . I have in my possession three musical instruments that once belonged to your father. He would have liked you to have them. He would have liked you to know that some part of him lives, even if only in these instruments.

  In her mind, Teera hears the music of her father’s sadiev. She doesn’t know why, but of all the instruments he played, she remembers the sound of this ancient lute most vividly. Perhaps it’s because as a child she grew up listening to her father trying to master it. She remembers a song, not its name but its melody, each note like a drop of predawn rain on bamboo.

  She closes her eyes and lets the melody wash over her.

  Someone raps on the front of his cottage. The Old Musician opens his eyes. The Venerable Kong Oul stands in the open doorway, a small black umbrella shielding the elder monk from the soft drizzle. “I’m sorry for intruding,” the abbot apologizes, his voice unusually deep and authoritative for a man so slight in build.

  “I’ve come to ask for your participation in a ceremony. We have a young couple, the Rattanaks—you know them—whose boy is sick, and they wish to hold a blessing for him.”

  The Old Musician recalls seeing the couple and their boy some months back. “What’s wrong with Makara, Venerable?”

  “Louh pralung—the parents believe a ghost has lured their son’s spirit from his body to a forest, and as such they wish to make an offering of food and music to call the straying spirit back to the body. I’m wondering if you could play your sadiev.”

  “Of course, Venerable.”

  The abbot furrows his brow. “I’ve spoken with Dr. Narunn. He said the boy is suffering from drug abuse and recommended he be taken to a proper rehabilitation center, preferably an international one. I’ve expressed as much to the parents. While they suspect he’s indeed using this ‘crazy medicine’—as they call it—they believe that the straying of his spirit may be the root of all their son’s problems.”

  Then, brightening, the abbot adds, “We’ve decided the ceremony should take place ten days from now, which coincides with the boy’s birthday. An auspicious day, befitting a ceremony for rebirth, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, Venerable.”

  The abbot’s eyes stray over to the upper corner of the bamboo bed where the lute leans over the oboe and drum as if whispering in confidence. “You ought to know I wrote to Miss Suteera, informing her that the communal stupa is finished. This was a while ago. I’ve yet to receive a reply.” The abbot hesitates. “It’s possible that her spirit has also strayed, journeyed too far to hear your lament. If it’s any consolation, my dear old man, I believe these instruments are meant for your keeping. Perhaps their purpose is to aid you in transcending another’s suffering.”

  “You are too kind and wise, Venerable. I rely on your foresight.”

  The abbot studies him, then, putting out his hand to feel the splattering drops, says, “Ah, if only I had the foresight to know when the rain will clear. I’ll let you return to your reverie.”

  Alone again, the Old Musician tries to picture her in this setting. She whose presence he has sensed these past months, as surely as he felt her father’s ghost with him all these years. He straightens and looks around the vast temple grounds, his mind discerning clearly those things his vision can perceive only vaguely from a distance.

  The compound is hemmed lengthwise on the east by the Mekong and on the west by a road. A vihear, a rectangular prayer hall, rises in the middle of the grounds, wrapped by a spacious white-pillared veranda, with a set of tall double teak doors on each side painted an earthy red and stenciled with gold-enameled lotuses. He was hardly surprised to learn that the whole compound was in ruins when the Venerable Kong Oul found it in the mid-1980s. The Old Musician knew all too well that most of the country’s Buddhist temples, along with churches and mosques and other religious edifices, were converted during the regime into warehouses, holding centers, or prisons. He himself had seen to some of these transformations firsthand, turning a blind eye as his young comrades beheaded and toppled statues of the Buddha or used them for target practice. Many times he has wanted to confess to the abbot his role in the regime, but always the Old Musician feels he is pardoned before he opens his mouth.

  “I lost every single member of my family,” the old monk told him. “I’ve remained in the sangha, this spiritual fellowship, not so much to worship the gods but to honor the ghosts.” When he’d come upon the desecrated temple grounds during a boat ride along the Mekong, what first caught his eye was the remains of a staircase rising from piles of rubble and wooden debris. This partially burnt stairway, ascending to nowhere, moved him profoundly. The abbot set right away on the task of restoring Wat Nagara. “From this, from nothing, where could we go but up? We must rise from the ashes.”

  Standing where he is, the Old Musician can see past the vihear, the cremation pavilion, and the cluster of stupas to the high wall and the two gates that open to the main road. An ancient banyan tree separates the stupas from the clearing where many festivities and celebrations take place. In the dry season the area is bare and brown, but during the rainy season talon grass, known for its tenacious hold on the earth, carpets the slope down to the river, whose sandy shore has all but disappeared, swallowed by the seasonal floods. Presently the concrete stairway, flanked by naga balustrades, descends halfway into the water, with the serpents’ heads completely submerged, leaving visible only their undulating tails.

  Tall, mature frangipanis shade the grounds, some of their branches so bowed as to suggest hammocks, lending to the belief that ghosts and spirits often seek the refuge of these trees for their faintly fragrant blossoms. The Old Musician can’t be sure about the ghosts, but he certainly appreciates the trees’ ethereal beauty. The flowers fall in a constant stream, enshrouding the stupas and the surrounding pathways. They have a tentative hold on life, these blossoms. For it seems the moment their petals spread open, their beauty in full bloom, they lose their grip on the stems and fall to death. Their descent is made more poignant by a pair of white cotton banners hanging vertically along the front pillars of the cremation pavilion, each bearing in ornate black script a line of funerary smoat, poetry sung without music—

  As these blossoms wilt away . . .

  So my body succumbs to its inevitable end.

  That something as beautiful as a flower will also have served its purpose gives him comfort. His time too will surely come.

  The Old Musician returns his gaze toward the nearest gate, then the one farther away. Nothing. Not a sound or silhouette. He feels his hope slipping away, its footfalls heavy upon his heart.

  * * *

  There’s an interlude, a hiatus of melodic shimmer. He can almost hear it, the sound of sunlight bouncing off the leaves and petals, hitting the soft earth, a medley of no
tes that recall the rosewood keys of a curved xylophone in a royal court ensemble. He lifts the banana leaves that shelter his supply of firewood and sets them aside. It is a week from Pchum Ben, the festival honoring the dead, and for the past several days, the rains have fallen almost continuously, as if the sky wishes also to remember these otherworldly exiles and itinerants, mourning them with renewed tears, so that between one burst and the next the ground never fully dries but appears steeped in shadows, undefined longings.

  Next to the firewood, under a small plastic sheet, nestles an earthen brazier, shaped like a bottle gourd sliced lengthwise and hollowed out, with the bigger basin for the fire, and the smaller, shallower basin for excess cinders and ash. The Old Musician squats down, pulls the partially blackened brazier toward him, and, with a small bundle of twigs held together by dry vines, begins to loosen the moisture-laden ash that has settled like thick batter. If the rain keeps away, the ceremony to call Makara’s spirit back to his body will take place today at sunset as scheduled, and by then hopefully the ground will have mostly dried for the procession around the temple.