The ghosts are everywhere, crossing paths with her, joining her at the small table. Perhaps she is not alone after all.
Her coffee and croissants arrive. The waitress bows slightly and hurries back indoors, seeming glad to escape the curious scrutiny of her guest. Teera is equally grateful for the solitude, a moment to ease the nervousness, the apprehension that has accompanied her since waking.
She pulls out her cell phone, noting the time, and sets it on the table to not miss Mr. Chum’s call. She has enlisted his service for the long drive to Phnom Tamao. They will fetch Narunn from the White Building, go to Wat Nagara to meet the little girl, and together take her to see the hooting gibbons and sun bears at the wildlife sanctuary, as Yaya has suggested. While Teera is looking forward to the trip, she is also anxious about spending a whole day with a little girl whose name she’s yet to know, who has just lost her mother. How do you comfort a child whose parent, the only one she knew, was gunned down? I’m so sorry for your loss . . . Such words seem both formal and trite. Does the little one even know her mother’s dead? How do you explain such violence to a child? And then there’s the Old Musician. Teera can’t think of him without mourning her own loss.
She takes a sip of her coffee, as if caffeine would calm her nerves; tears a piece of croissant and nibbles on it, her gaze finding distraction at the far side of the children’s pool. Early on weekend mornings, outside guests as well as those staying at the hotel begin to lay claim to their favorite spots to linger for hours on end. Always among the first to arrive are Luna and her mother, Emma, who Teera now shares an easy exchange with whenever they cross paths at the pools. Emma, a single woman in her late forties, with exuberant red hair that seems a token of her strong personality, has lived and worked in Cambodia for many years. She’d adopted Luna three years earlier from an orphanage, an infant abandoned at the door of a clinic in an area known for its brothel scene. Luna, in the sagging two-piece swimsuit she practically lives in, bounces through the lounge area, closely followed by her mother, towing books and bags and various bottles. At the corner of the pool nearest the changing rooms, Emma dumps everything onto a pair of green-cushioned lounge chairs beneath a matching umbrella.
In the next seats over, a white-haired elderly couple, distracted by Luna’s cuteness, does not see that a monkey has lowered itself from a frangipani tree behind them, one arm grasping a branch, another reaching for their books and spectacles on the low table beneath the tree. Only when Luna lets out a gasp, clapping as if to spur the monkey on, does the couple become alert to the crime in progress. The husband shoos the monkey with his bathrobe, while the wife jumps several steps away, one hand over her mouth, the other on her heart. Judging by their reactions, this must be their first encounter with the furry fellow residents. After a few hissing threats between man and monkey, the apparent peacemaker relents, disappearing once again into the branches, though not without securing a conspiratorial nod from Luna.
The old couple resettles into their chairs, visibly relieved. Emma leans over, as if to reassure them, and though Teera can’t hear from this distance, she imagines her repeating what everyone has come to accept—that, while a nuisance at times, the monkeys add to the old-world charm of the hotel, and guests should expect to have their belongings brazenly snatched at least once during their stay. Keys, sunglasses, and cell phones are among the most coveted novelties. These are after all city monkeys, as an old gardener working at the hotel once told Teera, not too different from us svar pteah—“house apes.”
A stir ripples through the leafy treetops, and the monkey reemerges, leaping onto the balustrade of a balcony two floors up. Teera can see him clearly now. Hanuman, she’s nicknamed him, the palest of the long-tailed macaques that roam the hotel grounds, his fur so supple and silvery that he appears almost white in the sunlight. Something familiar is slung across his tiny shoulders like the end of a kite’s tail. Teera’s gaze darts back to the ground, and after a quick search, she spies Luna’s brown silhouette partly concealed behind the half-raised back of an empty lounge chair. It seems that while Emma was busy chatting with the old couple, Luna took off her bikini top and gave it to her cross-dressing friend. Still deep in conversation, Emma remains oblivious to her daughter’s escapade.
A laugh escapes Teera, and she feels her apprehension begin to subside. You love children, she hears Amara say. You’ll have fun with this little girl. She wishes her aunt were here with her. They should have made this journey together. There are so many things she failed to ask. Why didn’t Amara ever marry, have children of her own? Teera would’ve loved a young cousin. But in truth, she knows, this was not possible. A scene emerges in her mind, and Teera sees herself again as that eleven- or twelve-year-old peering from behind a screen of leaves, discovering something she didn’t quite understand.
* * *
It was evening and, after a long day of laboring in the mud and sun, everyone had washed and gone home. Only Amara remained with the leader of their kong chalat, a mobile work unit responsible for digging ditches to irrigate the rice fields. The two women stood side by side, with water up to their chests, in a clear pond surrounded by bamboo thickets, the unit leader still fully dressed, it appeared, and Amara wrapped in her sarong, dyed a deep black, as with all revolutionary clothes. The unit leader suddenly turned toward Amara so that their faces almost touched, gathered Amara’s drenched hair to the front over one shoulder, and then pressed her nose into it, into Amara’s chest, her wet skin, before she lowered herself completely into the water.
At first Suteera was confused, unsure what to do, but then understood she ought to remove herself from the vicinity, leave Amara and the unit leader their privacy. Amara must’ve assumed that she had gone home like everyone else, when in fact she had been slow in coming to wash. She’d dawdled in the rice fields, looking for crabs and crickets she could add to their sparse evening meal. Finding none, she meandered lazily along the dirt path, stopping finally at the bamboo grove at the mouth of the pond.
Suteera did not stay to see if the unit leader would resurface. It wasn’t drowning she feared, because both women knew how to swim well. Later—weeks, or maybe months—when the unit leader was taken away, branded an “enemy” of the Organization for reasons unclear to anyone, Suteera thought it was her fault, that because she hadn’t stayed that evening to keep the others away from the pond, the unit leader got caught, her love for Amara discovered somehow. But this reasoning didn’t make sense. Amara too would’ve been eliminated.
It was years before Teera would come to comprehend the intimacy, the love shared. She and her aunt were already in America, well adjusted to their new life, and Teera had wondered why Amara never paid heed to the men interested in her. You ought to marry one of them, she teased. Even our sponsor is hopelessly in love with you. Amara did not respond to her baiting. She stayed quiet for a long moment, and just as Teera started to think that she might’ve offended her aunt, Amara asked, her voice and gaze distant, Do you remember Comrade Sovann? The leader of our irrigation unit? Teera felt suddenly caught off guard, and she was afraid that saying yes would betray what she’d seen at the pond those many years before. So she told Amara she didn’t remember. Again, Amara fell into silence. Then, shaking her head, she finally murmured, When you’ve known love, you can’t settle for its substitute. It was the closest Amara ever came to opening that locked compartment of her heart.
* * *
Teera’s gaze follows Luna into the pool. Emma is beside her, seeming to have noted and accepted that the little sprite’s bikini top is lost. There’s something easy and natural about their relationship, as if they had always been mother and daughter. If the two were more physically alike, Teera would never have guessed Luna was adopted. It is the kind of bond Teera imagines Amara would’ve had with her own children, deep-rooted and yet undemanding.
She recalls now those weekends when she and Amara would go jogging together, then afterward stop at a park to watch the babies play with the
ir mothers. That one is so fat I want to eat him! With the cancer, they no longer went running but would still go to the park to watch the children or, as Amara put it, to inhale the plumpness of life. During one of the last few visits before Amara became bedridden, she said, I won’t be here to see it, but I know you’ll make a great mother one day . . . Love doesn’t die, Teera. It never leaves our side. From the very beginning, long before we knew who among us would live and who would die, your mother made me promise to love you for both of us. And I have, for her, for our whole family. You were never an orphan. Love was always your guardian. You have its abiding protection. It never abandoned you.
A lump forms in her throat, and Teera realizes what she has been dreading isn’t meeting the child at the temple, the little girl whose mother was slain, but herself, the girl whose mother ended her own life. She is terrified of coming face-to-face again with abandonment.
This admission releases her. She finishes her breakfast and, with her small belongings, walks back into the café to purchase sandwiches, pastries, drinks, desserts—enough food for a picnic party at the wildlife sanctuary. Her cell phone rings inside her handbag, a single cheery tune, and she knows it is Mr. Chum signaling her. He has arrived and is waiting in the parking lot out front. With the food in hand, she retraces her steps through the hallway and, as she passes the display of cocktail glasses once again, she catches a reflection of her mother in herself. She pauses, smiles at the reflection, and then rushes toward the sunlight. The ghosts follow her everywhere, yet for the first time, she does not feel haunted.
The last time the Old Musician saw the White Building was in 1974, the night he returned to the city to fetch his daughter. Three decades seems like a blink, but the transformation is complete, the decay irreversible. A mass tomb that appears neither for the dead nor the living but for those disavowed by both. Grime and mildew lay siege to it so that even its nondescript sobriquet bodes its vanishing. Aside from its sprawling silhouette, he does not recognize the Municipal Apartments, and it is unlikely that his erstwhile home bears any trace of him.
Still, even from a block away, he is shaken by the sight of it and dares not venture any closer. He leans on the high wall gating the villa at the street corner onto which he’s accidentally wandered, one arm pressed to his stomach to stop the quaking. At dawn this morning, he caught a ride on a tuk-tuk with some monks from the temple who often come to the city on the weekends for their alms rounds. He thought the change of scenery would do him good and decided to wander awhile longer on his own. He would be all right, he assured the monks. He knew his way. But now he wonders how he’s gotten here. Has the city changed so much that he no longer knows the streets, which turns to avoid? He’s come to where he should not have. Yet, he can neither backtrack nor move forward. A recurrent pattern in his life.
Breathe. You are here now. He lowers himself onto the sidewalk, sitting on the bare concrete like a beggar, his cotton satchel on his lap. Just look, and you might catch a glimpse of her. A cat rounds the corner and slinks past him, a moped whizzes through the intersection, a dog yawns and rubs itself against a lamppost across the street, and a vendor pushes her cart filled with breakfast buns toward a market area. The morning is still calm, the streets have been freshly swept of detritus, and the city has yet to be overwhelmed by noise and movement. In the clean early light, the Old Musician can almost believe that it’s possible to peel away the decades, the decay, and find her once again standing before him.
* * *
She stood in the dark living room, framed by the doorway, arms stretched wide. To embrace him or to block him from reentering their home, Tun couldn’t tell. Just seconds earlier, before unlocking the door with the key he’d carried close to his body all these months, he’d paused, reminding himself why he’d come this far, despite the danger ahead. With the fighting encroaching on the capital, Tun couldn’t leave Sita and Om Paan unprotected, at the mercy of either side. Given the government’s violent crackdown on collaborators and even relatives of suspected rebels, shepherding his family into the rebel-controlled zone seemed the safer path.
Tun had chosen this time of the night when most would be lost to dreams, when the need for sleep held sway, stopping all activities, even the battles. But there his daughter stood, wide awake, looking up at him. She’d padded from her room at the precise moment when he pushed the door open. Had she heard the movements of key and lock? Or had she by some mysterious intuition sensed his return, heard his footsteps long before he arrived?
Tun dropped to his knees so that he was at eye level with her, a finger over his lips so she would know to make no noise that might wake the neighbors. “Sita, I’ve come back . . .” he whispered, taking her into his arms, pressing her hard against his chest to stanch the tide of emotions threatening to flood his heart. She was soft, like down or a cloud, and for a moment he forgot himself, forgot the long months they’d been separated. “I see that your moonlets have been spinning away,” he teased, recalling the explanation she’d given long ago for her tenderness, this supple outer shell cushioning her inner self.
She pulled back, bewildered, and then, heaving as if to gather her bearings, murmured, “Oh, Papa, I’m not a baby anymore,” in a voice so composed that for a split second he was unsure whether it was hers or an echo of someone else’s. She stepped away from him, arms crossed in front of her chest now, as if to bar further affection.
Tun reeled at her self-possession, falling back on his haunches. Almost a year had passed since he left home, and he knew he ought to explain his absence, but there was no time. Besides, how could he even begin?
He looked to Om Paan standing behind her, a second silhouette in the night. The three of them, he thought, must look like a prop crew stealing onto a darkened stage, making unseen arrangements to an otherwise witnessed life. “We have to leave,” he stammered, the words tumbling out awkwardly like a command. Om Paan nodded, disappeared into the room she shared with Sita, and a few seconds later reappeared with two bundles. “I knew you’d come back, sir, so I prepared,” she told him with a calm that could only mean that during his absence the two of them had rehearsed this moment countless times, anticipating his return and their hurried departure, preparing the youngster to say good-bye to her home, her life. “We are ready.”
Tun picked up his daughter, sensing her slight resistance at being carried like a small child when it was obvious she no longer regarded herself as such. Om Paan closed the door soundlessly behind them, and though she knew they might never return, she locked it anyway, so as to delay others from discovering their absence.
With shoes off to mute their steps, they stole through the pitch-dark corridor and then, crouching low, weaved down the open stairwell. Outside, with their shoes back on, they dashed toward a pair of cyclos under one of the leafy trees in a row along the road. Roeun, the cyclo driver, was the same young man from Banaam whom Tun had met ten months earlier, in August of ’73. Back then Roeun hadn’t known he was aiding Tun to slip into hiding. This past March, Tun had made the initial inquiry from Oudong, the nearest provincial capital controlled by the insurgent forces, and, once Roeun was located, had reestablished connection.
It was now the beginning of June, and while government troops had launched attacks to reclaim Oudong, this one calm night afforded Tun an opportunity to extract his daughter and Om Paan from the city.
As requested, Roeun had brought along another cyclo driver, someone they could trust, a “comrade brother” in the network of insurgent sympathizers and collaborators, which, in the past year or so, had expanded to include a staggering array of people, from powerful government ministers and influential bankers to policemen and military officers to street sweepers and maimed beggars. Tun, with Sita still in his arms, climbed into one cyclo, while Om Paan settled into the other with their belongings, the bundles hidden from view beneath her feet. Tun turned briefly for one final look at their home, a tiny dark recess among rows and rows of other tiny dark recesses in the
night’s catacomb. He had no regret leaving it now. His daughter was with him. He’d endured his trial, bartered a part of himself, for this reunion.
As they knitted their way through the familiar streets, passing well-known sites and landmarks, the city enveloped them in an eerie silence, as if it were empty, inhabited only by shadows, and Tun recalled the evacuation of Oudong, in which the entire population of the town was herded like animals to resettle in a makeshift commune deep in an uninhabitable forest. He and his small unit of soldiers had arrived at the tail end of that evacuation, when the town was nearly emptied. He heard talk that the same thing could happen to Phnom Penh in the event of their victory, though he always dismissed it as rumor. The city’s population—perhaps more than two million now—was simply too big for such an undertaking. Even so, the momentous silence unsettled him, gave him a premonition, though he knew not what it was.
Tun wrapped his arms tighter around his daughter, one hand cupping her face. She’d given way to sleep, relaxing against his body. He could hardly believe he was holding her. He would do it all over again. For her, he would endure an ordeal far worse than what he’d gone through at the forest encampment. Yet, how could he possibly explain what had happened, why it had taken him this long to come back?
Music of the Ghosts Page 23
