Music of the Ghosts

by Vaddey Ratner

  Even more ironic, Mr. Chum was one such soldier, an on-the-spot recruit assigned to drive a truck that would relocate city people to the countryside. He had been a commercial driver, forced to take up the revolutionary cause when the Khmer Rouge stopped him in his vehicle loaded with cases of bottled soft drinks. He would either join them, the soldiers informed him, or face being shot for his “capitalist vocation.” His work for an import-export company had brought him to Phnom Penh, while his wife and three children remained back in their home province. He joined the Khmer Rouge, believing this would afford him the privilege to reconnect with his family. He never saw his wife and children again. To this day he doesn’t know their fates.

  When Teera chose him from a crowd of taxi drivers upon her arrival at the Phnom Penh Airport, she knew none of this. While the other drivers jostled one another, fighting to get her attention, Mr. Chum stood off to the side, smiling timidly. She liked him, felt reassured by his serene stillness amidst the noise and movements. What’s more, she thought his childlike face—the square jaw and bulbous nose—made him look like an older, darker version of the Chinese film star Jackie Chan, the quintessential good guy. It was only a couple of days after, when he picked her up at the hotel for her first tour of the city, that he proceeded to divulge his history, as if wanting her to know before she decided to further engage his service. She did hesitate for a moment, then remembered she’d once trusted a soldier and he’d saved her life.

  Despite his pravat smoksmanh—his “complicated background”—Mr. Chum has been nothing but generous and patient, always picking up his cell phone on the first ring when she calls. He’s driven her wherever, at the oddest hours, never once questioning her recurring needs to go to the promenade in front of the Royal Palace on a rainy dawn; to the same spot in front of Chaktomuk Theater in the heat of the afternoon, where long ago, she told him, she’d sometimes come for sugarcane juice; or to a ferry crossing to view the confluence of the three rivers.

  In less than a week, he’s learned to maneuver his vehicle to the unpredictable twists and turns of her memories, the unmapped leaps of her longings. Time and again, they will search for a place she vaguely recalls from childhood, only to discover that it no longer exists, much to his disappointment, as to hers. Presently, they’re on their way to visit a temple outside the city, though there are countless others closer in. He does not ask her why, and this is what she appreciates about him most.

  At a roundabout, they enter congested traffic. A rail-thin woman taps on their car window, begging for spare change. Mr. Chum rolls down the window and gives her one thousand Cambodian riels, about twenty-five cents, enough for a simple packet of rice and fish. She thanks him, palms together in the traditional sampeah. He asks about the small girl strapped to her bosom with a black-and-white checkered kroma, the whites of the cotton fabric yellowed with dirt—“Is she your daughter?” No, the woman explains, but she cares for the girl like her own. The parents were close friends, like a sister and brother to her. She hesitates before proceeding, “They’ve died of AIDS.”

  Teera, in her oversize sunglasses, sits frozen in place, unable to speak or move a muscle. How should she acknowledge such a revelatory exchange in so transient an encounter? How should she respond in this place where personal tragedy is routine? She shrinks back in her seat, wanting to give the woman the dignity of her confession.

  “Hello, madame.” The woman mistakes her for a foreigner. Mr. Chum gives a sad chuckle but doesn’t explain that Teera is Cambodian.

  A way opens up and they move on. Teera is grateful for the escape.

  The journey continues. At every pause, they encounter the homeless and the hungry. Sometimes throngs of children in rags press against both sides of their car, bobbing palms joined in sampeah, lips moving in continuous plea. If they’re too aggressive, Mr. Chum keeps his window up and tries to distract Teera with small talk, often marveling about America—“Everything all shiny and new and gigantic, right? Like the people!”—as if by his mentioning America, Teera would somehow forget she’s in Cambodia. At the moment, some children are knocking on her window, appealing to her directly, “Please, madame, little money buy food. Please, madame . . .” They echo one another.

  Today more than any other day—perhaps because she’s heading out of Phnom Penh for the first time—Teera feels she’s on a reverse exodus, journeying not toward a strange, unknown destination but returning to a place where she’s become a stranger, where people no longer recognize her as one of their own. They all assume she’s a foreigner—Thai, Malaysian, Filipino, some Asian other than Cambodian—and she wishes they could know that she too is koan Khmer, a child of this ancient race, that she’s come back to a homeland where her home no longer exists, to this land as scarred and ravaged as herself. She wishes they could know that she too went through war and revolution, lost loved ones, survived against incredible odds.

  And yet, to put herself next to them, to dig up her past suffering and line it side by side with the hardship they endure daily, their continuing struggle to survive, to think that she and they are the same because they share a history, would be a gross exaggeration of her own plight.

  So she stays hidden behind her dark glasses, protected in the borrowed anonymity of being “foreign.”

  “It’s okay,” Mr. Chum consoles, as if she were the one in need of consolation. “There are too many. You can’t help them all.”

  She nods, pushing back the emotions that compete to find expression on her face. When she can’t bear it any longer, she allows herself the solace of knowing that she is among the luckiest—she not only survived, she escaped.

  “What are you concocting?”

  The Old Musician startles out of his remembrances. He looks up and sees Dr. Narunn standing before him. “I—I was going to have some tea, Venerable.” As customary, he addresses the ordained physician by the title used for a monk. He is about to add, With my evening meal, but refrains from any mention of food in front of one who adheres to the monastic discipline of no food or drink besides water beyond noon. “I didn’t see you coming, Venerable.”

  “Well, you know, I thought I’d sneak up and steal a cup of whatever you’re brewing.” Dr. Narunn lowers himself on his haunches, gathering the hems of his saffron robe and tucking them in place. “I’ll have a bit of hot water with my condensed milk, please. And a slice of that cake, if you don’t mind.” He chuckles, his Adam’s apple bouncing happily. “I’m parodying myself, of course. The first time I was ordained and had to fast, that was all I could think of—food. I imagined what I’d say if people invited me into their kitchens during our alms round! Of course no one did.” He lets out a resounding laugh. “I’m not made for this life!”

  The Old Musician’s mood is instantly cheered by the doctor’s presence, the buoyant energy emanating from his friend. There is a nobility to the young man’s carriage, an assuredness in each movement. Every year for a month during the rainy season the doctor enters the sangha to meditate and take a respite from the demands of his profession.

  “You know,” Dr. Narunn says, observing him, “you are constantly squinting now, more than ever before. We really ought to protect what’s left of your sight.” It was Dr. Narunn whose help the Old Musician had enlisted to write the letter. “Please let me get you a pair of glasses.”

  “Thank you, Venerable, it is very kind of you.” How can he tell the young doctor that his sight cannot be remedied, that his partial blindness is rooted in the betrayal of his mind, not his eyes? “I would feel too disoriented with those modern things on my face.” Let others believe he was a stubborn, benighted old peasant, refusing the aid of technology. “Maybe an eye patch to cover the bad eye is better suited for me—more dashing, don’t you think?”

  “You’re right! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. It’ll certainly strain less if you keep it covered. I’ll see what I can find.”

  “I was only joking, Venerable. You mustn’t bother.” The truth is it�
�s best not to be able to see at all. As it is, one already perceives too much suffering . . .

  “Yes, and less easily, but surely one also glimpses the possibilities for change, for transformation.”

  He’s startled by the doctor’s response. It happens more and more now that he speaks aloud without realizing it. The line between thought and speech bleeds, and he is back in his cell—Tell us what you know! Confess! Or else you’ll end up like the others! Blood obscures his vision, seeping down into his skull.

  He blinks and sees only Dr. Narunn looking at him intently. He remains silent, terrified of his own mind.

  “I’ve just spoken with the abbot,” the young doctor says, changing the subject. “He has some urgent matter to attend to outside the temple. He wants me to take his place and lead the chanting in the evening’s ceremony. I understand you are to play your sadiev?”

  “He’s so young, Venerable.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “The boy, I mean.”

  “I was just as surprised to find out it was our Makara. His parents brought him to my clinic a few weeks ago. He showed all the symptoms of a meth addiction. You’d think he was a ghost, not just a person who’d lost his spirit to one.”

  “He turns twelve today and, I’m told, his parents have chosen his birthday to have this ceremony, to symbolize a rebirth. At this age, Venerable, one hasn’t lived long enough to acquire a habit, let alone an addiction.”

  “Unfortunately, they’re younger and younger, the children who’ve fallen into drugs. One encounters them as young as seven or eight. Meth is a popular drug among the poor youth, like Makara, who turn to it to escape their realities. You can’t blame them. Here, in the city especially, they see everything at close range. Fancy houses and fancy cars, flat-screen TVs, digital cameras, computers and laptops, exorbitant wealth in the hands of a few . . .”

  The Old Musician is not familiar with some of these. Flat-screen TVs, digital cameras, laptops. He repeats the words silently, learning them as he would in his youth any new English words, committing them to memory. They didn’t exist a few years ago in Cambodia, and certainly not when he was a young student in America. As for computers, he has seen the one the Venerable Kong Oul has in his study, a small square machine humming and glowing, flipping pictures like some creature of memory sorting through its recollections. He thinks back to the days when monks were barely allowed to own a pair of sandals. How much the world has progressed, despite the failed revolutions. If only he’d had more patience, more faith.

  “They’re privy to all that excess and glitter,” Dr. Narunn continues, his voice becoming taut, “while they themselves have no access to the most basic things. Do you know that the cost of a handgun could buy a family like Makara’s enough corrugated tin sheets for a new shelter?” The doctor shakes his head. “Yet, it seems, there are as many handguns as cell phones, because our Excellencies and their children dispense them like playthings to their bodyguards.”

  It’s obvious to the Old Musician why his young friend needs the enclosure of the sangha now and then. To critique the government so openly on the street could get one killed. Assassins could be made on the spot for as little as a few hundred dollars.

  “Perhaps you are right,” Dr. Narunn concedes, sighing. “There’s so much suffering. It’s everywhere—inescapable.” Despair seems to have supplanted the doctor’s earlier hope. “The poor remain poor, trapped in a slum, which is a kind of underworld for the living, if you ask me.”

  The kettle spews steam from its lid and spout, hissing violently.

  “Ah, it’s angry at my diatribe!”

  They both try to laugh, but disconsolation has joined their company, refusing to leave.

  “You should have your tea,” Dr. Narunn suggests in a desultory tone. “And also something to eat to sustain your strength through the ceremony—”

  The physician stops abruptly, looking up the steps of the prayer hall. “We have a visitor,” he says after a moment. “In a white dress and a big floppy sun hat. A foreigner, I think, from the look of her clothing.” Whenever they’re together the doctor has taken it upon himself to describe those things at a distance. “She’s walking up the steps of the vihear.”

  “Someone we know, Venerable?”

  But Dr. Narunn doesn’t hear. He stands up, straightens his robe, and, most curiously, checks his appearance, then takes a step forward. “I’ll see if she needs any assistance . . .”

  Teera dashes up the steps of Hotel Le Royal at a speed that feels to her more like flying, her sandals grazing the red carpet draping the center of the expansive staircase. She keeps her head bowed to avoid eye contact. People come and go, a continuous traffic up and down the stairs. Some greet her as she passes, their familiar tone indicating they recognize her as a fellow guest. From a couple of steps above, the general manager pauses in his chitchat with others to offer—“Salut! Ça va?” Teera returns his greeting, using the bit of French she knows, but doesn’t slow her steps to allow for conversation. At the top, she turns and gives one last wave to Mr. Chum. She can see he’s worried. He doesn’t want to leave her like this, but he’s forced to move his mud-splotched Camry to make way for a shiny black Mercedes pulling into the arcade of the hotel driveway.

  Since fleeing the temple, Teera has encased herself in silence. During the entire drive back to the hotel she shut him out. She hopes he doesn’t think her muteness has anything to do with him, that she’s dissatisfied with his service or his driving. The past, surely he knows, is tricky terrain, riddled with potholes and pitfalls and unmarked graves. No matter how vigilant you are, you can find yourself in a head-on collision and, amidst the shock and reverberation, catch in the periphery of your vision a phantom of your deepest longing. In the memory of Music Master . . .

  Teera tilts her woven sun hat forward to hide her face and sails past the doormen dressed in their silk pantaloons and high-collared tunics, each holding a door open for her. They give a slight bow but refrain from saying anything, clearly sensing she’s not in the mood to stop and exchange pleasantries.

  She panicked. She’d simply panicked. At Wat Nagara, a monk came up behind her on the steps of the prayer hall to greet her, and just as she turned to face him, she caught sight of the stupa, her father’s name glittering in gold on its white dome. Teera felt the wind knocked out of her. She couldn’t speak. Instead, on impulse, she pretended she was a foreign tourist who didn’t know the language and bolted away, leaving the monk completely nonplussed on the steps. Outside she pleaded with Mr. Chum to go, startling him with her emotive outburst, her voice quaking to a breaking point. Please let’s leave—please!

  As they screeched away, the car wheels stirring up water and mud from the puddles left by the recent rains, she glimpsed through the open entrance the whole dedication. In the memory of Music Master Aung Sokhon and family who lost their lives. She was utterly unprepared for the devastation, the summary of her loss in that finite phrase. She’d planned this first visit to the temple without letting the abbot or anyone know. She’d even taken care to enter discreetly through one of the smaller side gates, asking Mr. Chum to wait outside by one of the main entrances in front. She wanted to be alone with the ghosts, to seek communion with her loved ones. Instead she came face-to-face with her aloneness, saw it reflected wholly, indelibly, in the engraved invocation.

  Teera hurries now through the lobby with its elegant teak furniture and art deco pieces, its gleaming marble floor and high ceiling, a wall boasting two large black-and-white photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy during her historic visit in 1967. When she passes the corner reception bar, Devi, a pretty young waitress she’s come to know well, is busy decorating fresh juices with orchids to welcome new arrivals. Teera is tempted to ask for a stiff gin and tonic to loosen the tension in her neck and shoulders. But before Devi looks up, Teera steps into the adjoining veranda, where a couple and their son are enjoying afternoon tea and cake in the air-conditioned coolness. “Papa, Maman, regardez
le lézard!” the little boy exclaims. Teera has seen them before, a Cambodian-French family, and the way the little boy says “Papa”—round and solid like an embrace—makes her want to weep.

  The family smiles at her as she passes, but she’s unable to reciprocate, certain that if she lets go of a single muscle, her entire being will unravel.

  She pushes open the set of doors and takes the few short steps down to the covered walkway between two swimming pools built to look like a bridge across water. The spacious, blossom-strewn courtyard—bordered by the four colonial-style buildings and shaded under a canopy of giant monkey-pod trees—seems like a world far from the rest of Phnom Penh.

  She reaches the rear building and turns right into the warmly lit hallway, the wooden heels of her sandals clicking against the polished black-and-white checkered tiles that remind her of the floor of her childhood home. When she arrives at her room, she fumbles with her key and lock. One of the cleaning girls, noticing her agitation, rushes over and unlocks the door for her. Teera nods her thanks and quickly enters her room. She hangs the “Do Not Disturb” sign outside, closes the door, turns the lock.

  Without flicking on the light, she walks into the bathroom, sheds her white cotton dress and sun hat, steps into the claw-foot tub, and, turning the shower knobs, lets the water crash down on her. She weeps, alone and naked in her sorrow.

  The monks have emerged from their cramped shelters to take advantage of the lull in the rains, their blurred silhouettes like streaks of turmeric or cinnamon powder scattered across the temple grounds. On a grassy patch between the ceremony hall and the Old Musician’s cottage, a group of them engages in a soccer game, robes hitched up to keep the hems from soiling as they roll and kick the worn ball. Nearby another group gathers in a circle with one player in the middle bouncing a shuttlecock on the side of his foot, then projecting it high in the air for another player to receive and continue the choreography.