Music of the Ghosts

by Vaddey Ratner

  The Old Musician takes pleasure in the movements and sounds around him. He hears footsteps approaching. Turning, he sees Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith heading for the vihear. He angles himself to follow them with his good eye. The two oblates race up the stairway, then emerge at a window at the top of the prayer hall. There they perch side by side, a pair of orange macaws, feet firmly planted on the wooden sills, arms extending straight out on upright knees, their gazes cast toward the river and the geography far beyond.

  He wonders whether Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith are contemplating their flights, longing for loftier existence. Both boys are orphans. Mr. Brown’s parents died of AIDS, which according to Dr. Narunn has spread with the country’s growing sex trade, human trafficking, and drug addiction. Mr. Smith’s father, a journalist known for his outspoken criticism of land-grabbing and forced evictions, was shot and killed on a crowded market street by armed men on a motorcycle. A month later, Mr. Smith’s mother suffered the same fate. The two adolescents were recently ordained and will likely remain at the temple until old enough to live on their own.

  During the period of Chol Vassa, the “Rain Retreat” from mid-July to the end of October, when the monsoon falls most heavily, Buddhist monks withdraw from the outside world and confine themselves within the temple compound to study and meditate. At this time one also sees the largest number of young men and boys enter the monastery for a temporary ordination that can last as little as three days or as long as three months. The majority of the younger ones are orphans whose parents, like those of Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith, have fallen victim to the myriad diseases of poverty or to the violence of armed politics and personal vendettas. No one will take the children of these victims in, for fear of contagion or retribution. At the temple they find a semblance of family, a roof over their heads, food and nourishment, even if only in the one daily meal. While a few will choose to pursue a serious spiritual path, most stay simply to escape poverty. Nonetheless, the Venerable Kong Oul rarely turns anyone away, believing that education, practical or spiritual, cannot be gained on an empty stomach or while shivering in the rain.

  With water from the clay cistern, the Old Musician washes his face, soaks one end of his kroma and wipes his arms and torso, splashes his feet and flip-flops clean of dirt, then shuffles back inside to prepare for the ceremony. He finds the white achar shirt and the pair of black wraparound pants, the only clothes he owns without patches or stains. Coincidentally, they were a gift from Makara’s parents during Krathin, a carnival-like festivity with performances of chayyam drums and giant puppets that beckon the entire community and passersby to the temple to make donations. When the Rattanaks handed him the parcel of wrapped clothes, the Old Musician hesitated, reminding them that he isn’t a monk. He possesses no spiritual wisdom, nothing he could impart to help ease their difficulties. They told him they expected nothing in return, except his simple wishes—a prayer or two on their behalf to the tevodas and deities—that they would always have rice in their pot and a place to sleep, that their son, Makara, would abandon his errant ways and return to school, grow into manhood strong and resourceful.

  The Old Musician was moved by their generosity, knowing that the couple has so little to begin with, the wife a vegetable seller and the husband a motodup driver who taxis people on his rusted scooter, together earning barely enough to feed themselves and their son. How could they think that one as destitute and vulnerable as he should have the power to alter their circumstances with his wishes? Yet, that they should think so gave him pause. In truth, it prompted in him a small awakening.

  He has not turned to religion. Nor has he renewed his belief in camaraderie and brotherhood—the ideology of revolution. Rather the simple gift of clothes, made on the faith that what one gives to another will not be lost, led him to consider that the arbitrariness of birth and circumstance might be altered not through grand schemes of social engineering but through such minute selfless acts, the gestures of empathy we extend to one another in our daily encounters. It’s clear to the Old Musician that without the kindness of his fellow human beings he would be left to walk the streets barefoot and naked, abandoned among the city’s refuse.

  He wishes now for the Rattanaks a fortune as vast as the spirit of munificence they’ve shown him. He supposes in this way he’s learned to pray not as one might to the gods but as one does by simply pausing every now and then to think of others.

  He walks to the open doorway and, before lowering the burlap partition to dress in privacy, scans the compound once more. He blinks, again a flash of white appearing before him. If he tells Dr. Narunn about it, he’s afraid the young physician will inform him that he’s losing sight in the good eye as well, that the white flare he sees with increasing frequency is a kind of phantom cataract before the real condition sets in, before total blindness. No, he must not tell the doctor. He prefers to think it is she who invades his vision, this specter of his sorrow.

  He espies her in all he beholds.

  The brass knocker echoes in the hallway, followed by a male voice. Room service! Teera tightens her bathrobe, gathering the collar for modesty, and opens the door. Samnang, the young man who’s brought meals for her before, walks into the room, bearing a tray with a pot of hot water, a caddy of assorted teas, and a steaming bowl of rice porridge, along with a vase of orchid blossoms. Devi trails him as he puts the tray on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The young waitress greets her, palms together in the traditional sampeah. “We are all worried, big sister. You didn’t look well when you came back from your outing.” She steps back so as to be able to face Teera without having to tilt her neck and look up.

  At five foot eight, Teera towers over Devi, but she must come off frail or broken in some way to engender the sympathy and protectiveness she’s been receiving from the hotel staff.

  Devi’s eyes flit to the food tray and then back to Teera. “Rice porridge is not very nutritious. It’s sick people’s food. Are you sick, big sister?” Behind her, Samnang furrows his brow in shared concern.

  Teera shakes her head.

  “Is there anything else you need?” Devi persists. “Maybe hard-boiled eggs or ground sweet pork to go with it? At least some grilled salted fish?”

  “Thank you, but I have everything I need. And really, I’m fine. It was probably just the heat. I’m not used to it yet. The shower was good. I’m feeling much better already.”

  “You’ve gone out every day. Maybe you should rest, stay in for a day or two. Just enjoy the hotel—it’s beautiful here. Outside there’s so much mud and dirt. Srok Khmer is not like America.”

  Yes, the dirt. As if it were the only thing. Teera signs the bill and hands it back to Samnang. The two bow and leave, and as the heavy wooden door softly closes, she hears rapid whispering back and forth: If she were plumper, she’d be very beautiful. It’s the style over there. What—looking bony and sad? Oh, you boys don’t understand trends!—I think big sister’s beautiful as she is. I think you’re beautiful, Devi. A sudden hush.

  Teera imagines Devi blushing. Big sister, they all call her. Even in the States, Cambodians address each other by familial terms. There she thought nothing of it, but here it stabs her every time, this default claim of kinship, this illusion of continuity and wholeness. Maybe Devi knows what she’s talking about after all. The dirt here clings to you, crimson and sorrow-tainted, no matter how long you stand under the shower.

  Teera walks over to the writing desk near the head of the bed and confronts her reflection in the mirror on the wall. She runs her fingers through her damp hair, regretting all over again that in a moment of rashness, a week or so before making the journey here, she’d taken a pair of scissors and, in the Buddhist act of letting go, chopped off the long strands. It looks better now, thanks to her hairdresser, who, upon seeing her handiwork, lamented, Oh, your beautiful curls, I just want to faint! She wonders, though, whether the shoulder-length crop makes her look even thinner, more long-limbed and willowy than she already is. She
hasn’t been eating or sleeping well for months.

  She puffs her cheeks out, imagining a fuller face, a self less spare, less spectral. Maybe you’d gain some weight with less hair to lug around, Amara would always tease, hand smoothing Teera’s massive waves. But I can’t imagine you looking any other way. You’re the spitting image of your mother. Whenever her aunt said this, Teera felt an echo of another self, as if her body was not hers alone.

  She returns to the sofa, drops a bag of Earl Grey into the teapot, and, letting it steep, begins to take slow sips of the rice porridge, her comfort food. When she was a child, starving, even a few spoonfuls of the plain, watery gruel would calm her stomach, lessen the horrible pang. How long ago that was. And yet, no matter how far she has traveled, something as tactile as a knot in her stomach can collapse time and space and plunge her back to the moment when hunger was all she knew.

  She pours herself some tea and reaches into her shoulder bag on the floor, pulling out the two books she bought early this morning at the hotel bookshop, the Lonely Planet guide and a collection of essays. Her fingers flip through the guide, stopping at a map of Phnom Penh. She notes that many of the street names are still preceded by the French rue, as painted on the road signs. She reads them aloud in succession like the headings of a history lesson that stretches from Cambodia’s mythical past to its multifarious present. She locates Duan Penh, where her hotel stands, the avenue named in honor of the legendary widow Lady Penh, whose divine vision supposedly led her to erect a temple on the hill, two blocks east of here, around which grew the eponymous city, Phnom Penh, the “Hill of Lady Penh.”

  Main roads with names like Confédération de la Russie and Dimitrov jostle those named for royal personae—Sisowath and Norodom and Sihanouk—like revolts against feudalism itself. Phnom Penh is probably the only city in the world where one would find Charles de Gaulle, Josip Broz Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mao Tse-tung, and Abdul Carime all in the same tight geography. This map, she thinks, is a study in the accumulated layers of geopolitics that intertwine here, none completely erasing that which came before.

  Teera sets down the guidebook and picks up the volume of essays, letting her index finger trace the letters on the front cover. Understanding the Cambodian Genocide. From among the bookshop’s offerings, she was attracted by this title, its bold and capitalized confidence, its promise of an explanation. She turns the pages and tentatively begins reading, curling up in the sofa as she did years ago in the armchairs of Cornell’s Kroch Library, home to the Asia collections. For hours at a time, she’d pore over old journals and manuscripts from Cambodia, deepening her knowledge of her native tongue, reawakening her childhood love of reading, searching for clues. Despite her aunt’s gentle warning, she was drawn to history, captivated by its fluidity and ease with the language of loss. That was then, this is now, Amara would remind her. It’s all in the past. We’ve left that land behind.

  Cambodia. Kampuchea. Srok Khmer. No matter how she says it, Teera knows it will never leave her tongue. It will never leave her, even as she tries to peel it from the memory of her skin. It has stained her. Marked her with the lives lost, those whose faces she’s forgotten but whose voices, whose screams and pleas, weave the tenuous boundary between dreams and nightmares. She recalls once again that particular evening, its twilight glow, in which corpses sprawled across rice paddies looked at first glance like families sleeping. Even now, a lifetime later, the dead stalk her, and she, who wishes only for their burial, a restful end to their journey, hears their cries as her own.

  She gets up from the sofa and, pulling the double glass doors open, steps onto the balcony. She needs fresh air, the voices and presence of living people. She inhales deeply, her attention immediately drawn to the sounds of paddling and splashing a few yards away in the children’s pool. A roly-poly toddler in a sagging two-piece wades sneakily to the far corner of the pool, climbs the edge, tummy pressing against the tiles, leaps to her feet, and bounds off. Water drips from her drenched bikini bottom, leaving a wet trail on the pebbled mosaic floor, like an umbilical cord connecting her to an aqueous origin. A woman, as pale as the toddler is brown, turns from her conversation with a friend and says suddenly, “Luna?” In a split second, she runs after the toddler, whose cherubic form rounds the pillars of the roofed walkway separating the shallow children’s pool from the deep pool at the opposite side of the courtyard. “Luna! Luna, if you jump again, Mommy’s going to—” Splash!

  Teera goes back inside and shuts the balcony doors, fogging the glass panes with the humidity she’s let into the air-conditioned room. She breathes on the glass directly in front of her face, thickening the vapor. Then, with the tip of her forefinger, she draws a straight line, a band of opening, and peers through it, back into the verdant, tangled underbrush of the past.

  In his clean new tunic and pants, the Old Musician is transformed from a mendicant to a respectable elder. Such loose-fitting clothes were popular among the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea, except then everything had to be dyed black. Black is simply practical, often worn by peasants when working in the fields. During Democratic Kampuchea, though, black was equated with the peasantry itself, with a way of life that was incorruptible, absolute. Black meant erasure.

  The mistake of the party leaders was to believe that people could easily be reeducated, that culture and tradition and history, all thousands of years in the making, could be obliterated in a single angry stroke, like a painter’s tableau smeared to suit an abrupt change in perspective. Perhaps it’s because these leaders had been so thoroughly transformed by their own reeducation abroad, particularly by Le Cercle Marxiste, in the Paris of the 1950s.

  As for himself, besides that brief flirt with America, he had never traveled anywhere else, not to France, where many of the party leaders had studied in their youth; not to Yugoslavia, where Pol Pot had his revolutionary awakening; not even to neighboring Vietnam, where many of his comrades had gone into hiding; none of those countries whose Socialist aspirations he would come to adopt. He was the product of a homegrown education—if there was such a thing, given the deep colonial influence—first learning the basics of reading and writing from the monks at the temple, then continuing primary years and collège in public schools based on the French system, which emphasized Western classical studies and often used French as the principal language of instruction.

  Perhaps because of this requirement to learn French, the tongue of their former masters, he saw English as a liberating novelty and seized upon the language when it was introduced to him at the School of Arts and Trade. Later, during that last spring at the vocational school before he was to leave for America, when he enrolled in the intensive English class, his Indian teacher from Burma, rumored to be a Communist, spiced up the methodical lessons on syntax and grammar with talk of self-rule, political sovereignty, and equality for all. Concepts inherent not only to Communism, the teacher had rhapsodized, but to democracy as well. Anil Mehta was inspired by events in his homeland, India’s progress after independence in establishing a democratic republic.

  Looking back on it now, he wonders if his political consciousness first awakened when he was that eager student poring over a copy of Anglais Vivant d’Angleterre, as Mr. Mehta, in his philosophical voice, added social and political commentary to sentences from the book, alternating between English and French. Or perhaps it took root much earlier. With music.

  The Old Musician pours himself a cup of tea, kept hot in the large thermos that—like the kettle and the other possessions of this cottage—he’s inherited from the late temple sweeper. He blows on the steaming liquid, which smells faintly of jasmine, and takes a sip.

  Music. Always it followed him, at every stage of his life, nudging its way into all he saw and did, like the unyielding will of the father whom he feared but whose musical genius he could never aspire to, despite the caning to his back.

  His father was a man of uncompromising vision. The old man saw music as a kind of sublime blessing,
like rain or sunlight, something not to be taken for granted or reserved for the privileged few. While the old man could have made a place for himself among the country’s most respected music masters, could have earned enough money to feed the family by playing for the rich and powerful, he would feign chronic rheumatism when invited, claiming he wasn’t fit to entertain, choosing instead to play for the poor, for whom music was the only antidote to daily struggles. In the beginning, his father would play all kinds of music, from the sacred to the secular. As long as his audience was the needy and the indigent, he’d gladly share his melodies. Then one day, his father stopped playing altogether, except in the capacity of a medium where his sadiev became the voice used to communicate with the ghosts and spirits. The old man became impoverished, barely able to feed him and his mother, and he, the ten-year-old son—Tun, as he was called then—had to find his own way in the world.

  As an adolescent, he joined an ensemble in which he eventually became known not only for his sadiev playing—honed under his father’s strict guidance, he must admit—but also for the songs he wrote, the sublime lyrics he sang for the dead in exchange for handouts from the living. If music, as his father believed, is a kind of cure, then destitution, he realized in those dire years when he and his mother existed hand to mouth, was the worst kind of ill. He would use his music to escape it. It was this vow he’d made to himself—not his father’s beating—that fueled his discipline, pushing him to excel in his art. Later, even as a respected and sought-after musician, he never forgot his humble beginnings and would align himself with those striving for change, those seeking to make Cambodia a more just and fair society, a modern nation. He joined a political group, attracted to its progressive ideals, and then, when his hometown was bombed by the Americans, became a member of the underground movement, embracing its radical ideology, its anger.