Music of the Ghosts

by Vaddey Ratner

  The interrogator allowed the guard to catch his breath, and then asked, “Did he die?” his placid tone in stark contrast to the guard’s excitable words.

  “No, Elder Brother. Well, almost . . . I don’t know.”

  “I heard a gunshot.”

  “Yes, Elder Brother, one of us fired our gun to warn him not to die . . . he must wait for you. It’s not our fault. He asked for pen and paper. He said he wanted to confess. We told him you were busy now with another prisoner, he must wait his turn. He insisted. So we sharpened a stick—a fake pencil—and tossed it to him. ‘Here, you dog, write your shit!’ A joke, Elder Brother. We meant it as a joke. He used—”

  “Enough!”

  Dead silence.

  With his blindfold still on, Tun could not see beyond shadows. But he felt the fear around him thick as walls.

  “How unfortunate,” the chief interrogator murmured. His calm pronouncement sent a shiver through the room. Tun could feel him rising from his desk. At the door, the interrogator paused and said, “You two come with me. And you, take this prisoner back to his cell.”

  The guard gripping hold of Tun’s arm replied, “Yes, Elder Brother.” It was the boy.

  For a moment there was absolute stillness, and then Tun sensed the boy fidgeting beside him, adjusting the collar of his shirt, or perhaps a kroma around his neck, the checkered pattern breaking the solid black of his pajama-like uniform. Tun heard the soft timbre of thread breaking, and a second later felt the hard, cold press of steel at the center of his palm.

  “Here’s your way out,” the boy whispered. “Do it right. Otherwise, we both pay.”

  * * *

  Tun stared at the tiny blade, so delicate it resembled a piece of jewelry. A pendant perhaps. A spear-shaped amulet for protection. There was even a hole at the base one could thread a string through and wear it around the neck. Keep it hidden beneath a collared shirt. The top edge was smooth and linear, the cutting edge angled and tapered to an arrow tip. If he ran his thumb against it, even lightly, it would cut. The circle of rust around the hole suggested that it had been previously attached to some kind of handle with a tiny screw or bolt. Aside from the rust, it was in perfect condition. An artisan blade. A rare weapon. At Slak Daek, it could only have come from the cache of implements. That it should be in a prisoner’s possession was unheard of. Yet, here it was, in Tun’s own hand. A gift to end his life.

  He had kept the blade for two days now. He could not risk keeping it much longer. So far he’d hidden it by inserting it in the hem of his ragged shirt. This was the first time he’d taken it out to examine, and he did so surreptitiously, wedging it between his thumb and palm. Even Sokhon had yet to know. His friend was gone, taken to interrogation. Many times Tun had been on the verge of telling, but he couldn’t bring himself to it. It would have made their pact so much more real, brought them that much closer to committing the terrible act, choosing who should go and who should stay . . .

  Do it right. Otherwise, we both pay. The youth’s words came back to him and Tun suddenly wondered, What guides a person’s hand? His heart? What has made the boy endanger his own life for a life nearly gone? Does compassion still find its way into hell? As sometimes a sliver of light steals through a crack in a sealed window . . . The thought filled him with hope for a second, and he thought, if only he could vanish carrying this sliver of light inside him.

  It looks to be an overcast day, the river phantom gray, the sky endlessly somber. For the Old Musician, it’s cold, bone-chilling at times, especially in the night and early dawn. But for Teera, it’s perfect, the most pleasant weather she’s experienced in these past few months. She dresses lightly but modestly for the temple, a simple silk sarong and cotton blouse, a soft organza scarf draped diagonally across her chest, a mantle of humility in this place of worship. He is bundled in several layers, one loose tunic on top of the other over a pair of wraparound pants, a grayish kroma wound around his neck to protect his throat from the seasonal chill. A thermos of hot water sits in front of him, along with a couple of tall, thick glasses, which this time he’s had the foresight to borrow from the temple. He offers her plain hot water and apologizes for having nothing else. She tells him she’s gotten used to drinking it again, no matter the weather, like a real koan Khmer. He fills her glass, and then his, wondering whether she’s just being kind, or whether indeed she’s acclimating. Steam rises and evaporates.

  The water is still too hot, he tells her, so they ought to let it sit. She tells him that in Minnesota this is summer temperature, but here everyone freezes. As if to concur, he brings his palms over his glass, cradling the warmth. How fragile he looks, Teera thinks, remembering the last time they were face-to-face, the marks of history riddling his body, the weight of it upon him. Yet, he also appears somehow lightened. Just as she, to the Old Musician, appears transformed—more rooted in some way by her journeys.

  Only moments ago he arrived, waiting in the ceremony hall, and she came soon after, lowering herself on the straw mat in front of him to his right so that he could see her with his good eye. Channara, he thought for a breathless second. In traditional attire, she looked exactly like her mother. The long tamarind-colored skirt and cream blouse, cut to fit her slender frame as was popular in the 1960s, intimated a preference for classic simplicity, an inherited sense of elegance. She greeted him, palms together in the customary sampeah, and he saw too her father, the eyes that seemed at once intensely focused and endlessly seeking. Sokhon’s resolute will, the pinprick flicker of light he’d taken with him when he closed his eyes for the last time.

  She carries it now, this piercing luminosity. It radiates as she speaks. A beacon turning, turning, turning . . . Dispelling the shadows and gloom so that he feels his sight has been momentarily restored. The world around him becomes less mottled, less mangled. He listens without a word, without moving. He could listen to her forever.

  “Narunn sends you his greetings,” she tells him, flushing whenever she says the doctor’s name, a secret happiness making her glow all the more. “He’s purchasing a piece of land on Chruay Chongvar. Something he’s thought about for a long time, but never found a compelling reason for until now. He wants to build a home.” Her voice chimes with nervous joy. “He’s there now, signing the contract, having a final survey. Lah is with him. They’re inseparable.” She blossoms at this image.

  He’s not surprised by her words. When Dr. Narunn offered to take the child and look after her for however long necessary, the Venerable Kong Oul felt his prayers had been answered. I never once thought to ask the doctor, the abbot had confided, at least not to become a full-time caretaker of the girl, given he’s a man on his own. It’s a weighty responsibility, not to mention fraught with uncertainty. Yet, I can’t think of anyone more suited, more heaven-sent. The heart loves in spite of uncertainty, he thought of telling the abbot then. It continues to love in spite of danger and loss. Instead, he said, Sometimes, Venerable, the smallest, most vulnerable life has the power to move the heavens.

  He returns his attention to the heart blooming before him. She goes on to recount the trip she took several weeks ago to Siem Reap. How she and Narunn had decided spontaneously, telephoned the abbot and received permission to take Lah with them, packed in a mad rush, then left that very evening on the last flight, afraid that if they waited until the next morning, they’d change their minds.

  She tells him how they’d landed in the small airport amidst fields of tall grass, greeted by fireflies blinking in the peripheral darkness, mimicking the stars in the night sky. She tells him about the small boutique hotel with traditional wooden houses where in pitch-blackness she woke one night to the presence of her own ghost, its unfinished weeping.

  The timbre of her voice, the flow of words, her calm and generous revelation, this unreserved sharing that feels like forgiveness. He takes it all in, drinks it like fluid, the glass of water in front of him forgotten. How like her mother she is—gracious, wise. And yet, unlike her
also—gentle and open.

  Teera, undeterred by his silence, keeps talking. All this time she’s feared to trespass, even as she hungers to understand. But, if she doesn’t push against the door, how will she know whether it’s locked? She tells him about their visits to the temples of Angkor, and to Banteay Srei, its delicate yet splendidly carved red sandstones, its libraries with ornate real doorways as well as illusory ones, intimating perhaps that learning is a gathering of knowledge, the known and the manifested, as well as a leap of imagination, a reach for the mysterious, the invisible. Walking around the concentric courtyards, you certainly feel the ghosts of ancient scholars, hear the echoes of their ruminations.

  As she says this, he espies the ghost beside her, one of many now in their midst. He’s often wondered when Channara died, whether at the beginning of the regime or toward the end, and how. What was her state of mind as she succumbed to death? What surged through her heart? Love, anger, bitterness . . . regret, that most pernicious poison? He considers briefly whether he should ask, but just as quickly changes his mind. What good would it do now to know this? Such knowledge would not stanch his bleeding, reverse his disintegration.

  Teera recounts their pilgrimage to the Tonle Sap Lake, whose ebb and flow sets the pulse of the country, tracing the air with her fingers, invoking the anatomy of an organ, with its veins and valves, chambers, reservoirs and atria, which Narunn sketched in a page of her journal. “Our homeland, in his rendering, looks like the human heart.” And the heart, she now realizes, having seen how life stubbornly thrives and reasserts itself wherever she travels, will continue to beat.

  Watching her, he’s conscious that she’s surpassed her own mother’s age. He feels suddenly grateful to have a glimpse of the woman he loved in this burgeoning beauty. Suteera . . . Sita . . . If his daughter had survived, if she lived to this day, he imagines, perhaps this is how she’d look, how she’d sound. He remembers Suteera’s birthday. March, Sokhon told him. Soon she will be thirty-eight, not so young. Yet her life, he senses, is just beginning. Love is the only rebirth.

  Teera pauses, and without looking up takes a sip of water from her glass before continuing. She tells him about Narunn’s childhood friend and his wife, their lovely home on the water, the floating world of Elephant Tusk Landing. A place steeped in legends, memories, and love. She is hoarse from talking. Her voice fades, drawing to a close. “I wish you could’ve been there with us.”

  A flutter in his chest. She didn’t have to say this. He wants to repay her tenderness with his own—You are never far from my thoughts. But he needs all the self-composure he can muster. It is now his turn. “I’ve wanted to speak with you,” he says before he loses courage.

  She lifts her face to meet his gaze—the one sorrowed eye, the unknowable one beneath the black cotton patch. “I’m listening.”

  “But, before I begin, you must promise me that you will stay, that no matter how difficult it gets, you will remain to the end.”

  She nods.

  “You can judge me as you see fit. In return, I only ask that you witness the full extent of my crime.”

  And so it came to this . . .

  “Choice . . .” your father said, straining with every breath, as he cowered in a corner of our communal cell, now overcrowded with new arrivals. “Remember . . . our talk?”

  Our inviolable promise to each other. To choose when to die, and by whose hands. I nodded, unable to look at him, even as I crouched only inches away, my back against the wall, he on my right. Just as you sit now. Only hours earlier, your father had returned from yet another interrogation. The method of communication, it seemed, was air. Or, more precisely, its deprivation. All it took was a plastic bag to draw blood. His earlobes were coated with it, I’d noted through the corner of my eye, a dry streak running down each side of his face.

  “Look . . . at . . . me,” he said, summoning his strength.

  In my desolation, I finally understood why the boys in my father’s music troupe—close friends of mine whom I slept and ate and practiced with—would avoid me after I’d endured a beating from my father, our music master. I had believed then that they were ashamed of me, ashamed of whatever weakness of character always provoked my father’s wrath. Why couldn’t he just be a better student—a better son? I’d often imagined them grumbling to one another. If only he was less stubborn, quicker to submit . . . Now, in this prison chamber, witnessing without pause the suffering of a friend, I felt profoundly ashamed of myself, my incapacity, my uselessness. What good was compassion if it could not prevent, or even dampen, the violence inflicted on those around me?

  “Look at me,” your father commanded quietly but as forcefully as he could. The place was loud with the moaning and motion of other prisoners. I drew myself closer, looked at him, and he continued, “Soon . . . My time . . . will come soon.”

  What good was my existence if it only entrapped another in a lie?

  “There’s . . . nothing left,” your father persisted, inhaling, reaching deeper for strength. “Even they’ve run out of the lies they want me to repeat. There’s nothing left. Nothing more I can give them. Except my blood.” He paused, steadying his voice. “I’m marked for execution, you see. A slow, drawn-out execution. Their so-called doctor will come. There is a war, I’m told. They say they need my blood to treat the wounded.”

  He was hallucinating, I thought. There was no war, of course. The endless reverberation of gunshots we knew to be prisoners being executed in continuous waves. Even in moments of clarity, I could hardly distinguish gunfire from the rattle of chains echoing through the cells. The other things he was saying I couldn’t comprehend. I didn’t want to understand, to imagine.

  “How kind of them to explain it all to me. Perhaps this is their one act of courtesy.”

  I wanted him to stop talking, to preserve what little strength remained. But I understood all too well the mind emerging from torture, the muddle of pain. Words, even senseless words, were necessary, the struggled grasps reaching back toward sanity, toward life. Even as life had become nothing but misapprehension, an extended overture to total and permanent obliteration. I let him talk, torn by the desire for my own life to end and my desire to see him live.

  “Every time—just before the first blow, the first shock, the first cut of air from my lungs—I hum. It confuses them. Makes them hesitate for a split second. They can’t be sure if I’m submitting or rebelling. They think they have a monopoly on truth. But the truth will echo through, even under the weight of a mountain of forced confessions. I know that now.”

  He moaned, his shackled hand reaching for mine resting limply at my side, equally hindered. He tapped his fingers on my knuckles, a rhythm of sorts, and I realized he wasn’t moaning but was attempting to chant—to sing. In that place, at such a moment, your father was trying to sing. He licked his lips, swallowed, and once more gathered his strength. “The spirit of this land . . . lives in its fields of rice . . .” His voice was barely audible, but I recognized the cadence of a smoat as I leaned in to listen. He sang the same short lyric, the single stanza, over and over, his words as labored as his breaths. When he’d finished, I repeated the refrain, giving it the melody he intended.

  We were quiet for a moment, and then your father spoke again. “I wrote it . . . when I was making the sampho. It’s part of the drum, written into its skin. A hidden invocation. A sealed truth. It’s just as well . . . that I never had the chance to bury it. These fields are stained with the blood of so many . . . Yet, the music will endure, without me. I realize now I’m merely one in this ensemble. I’ve served my purpose, played my part—”

  “No, listen to me,” I said, cutting him off. “My daughter is gone, but your daughter, your wife and family, may still be alive. You must fight to your last breath.”

  “But when I can no longer fight, when they’ve siphoned my blood, and all I am is this vessel of pain. You promised me, Tun.”

  I lowered my head. I could not bear what he was ask
ing me.

  “Should you come out the lone victor in this battle, then find my daughter, find my wife . . . take my place.”

  * * *

  I cradled him, his head in the nook of my arm, the long chain on my wrists encircling his torso so that it must have appeared I was trying to bind him to me. Had such a thing been possible, I would’ve done just that—I would’ve bound your father’s breath to mine, given it the force of my own life. But he was beyond reach, the wounds accumulating on his arms and legs in addition to the gashes and sores covering his entire body, the sites the needle had punctured now swelling like blisters, the blood clotting beneath the bruised skin, leaking crimson, caking around him on the floor. What self or consciousness remained was undetectable, trapped inside the frozen mirrors of his eyes.

  They’d come several times already to draw blood. I’d stopped counting. The same two young “doctors” would come, illiterate adolescents, fumbling over the grimy page of illustrations they’d brought along each visit to guide them through the procedure. I was certain, having seen how such things were decided, they’d been chosen for “medical” training precisely because of their youth and ignorance, which, according to revolutionary logic, made them fierce, unafraid to “experiment.” When they came for the first blood collection, your father had still not recovered from the previous ordeal; the streaks of red coating his earlobes had yet to peel away completely. His effort to speak to me, moreover, had drained him of every ounce of physical strength so that he lay there on the floor as if waiting for them, as if complying with the cruelty, the demands of some beast-like appetite. This time there was no pretense of taking him out for interrogation. The bloodletting would be performed there in the room, in front of the other prisoners, as the chief interrogator had instructed. The two doctors—children really—started off arguing in hushed voices over which arm to try first, the difference between a vein and an artery, who should hold down the prisoner in case he struggled, and who should handle the needle. I’ve only practiced on a banana stalk, the younger of the two said, looking uncertain and scared, and the older tried to rationalize, Well, that’s why they sent us. Doesn’t matter if we do it right. We just need to make sure we get some blood . . . Despite their terrifying incompetence, their own panic and fear, they’d obtained what was needed, and more important, they had conducted their first pisaot manuh—“human experiment.”