Music of the Ghosts

by Vaddey Ratner

  Now I no longer cared what they’d do to me. I gathered your father tighter in my arms, as if he were the broken pieces of myself, his bruises my battered faith, his blood my own irreversible bleeding. Even if I lived to eternity, I knew I would never recover from these wounds we shared.

  I retrieved the tiny blade from its hiding place inside the hem of my shirt. I’d kept its existence concealed from your father, thinking it was meant for me, my own termination. There was no need to involve him, I’d decided. If I were to take my own life, it would be just my crime alone. I’d thought and rethought, until I could think no more, and there had never once been a doubt in my mind, or my heart, that between the two of us your father should be the one to live. But now this moment had arrived, and I realized our last conversation was not a reinstatement of our pact, an entreaty for me to hold to my promise, but was your father’s farewell. There was a choice, and he’d chosen his executioner. All that remained was that I must exercise my own terrible bounded choice.

  I had at my disposal this blade, a craftsman’s tool no bigger than a plectrum. As your father lay still in my arms, I searched his paralyzed gaze again for any movement, any shimmer or sign, anything other than this look of transfixed agony. I don’t want to end that way, he’d said of such entrapment. I pressed my ear to his mouth and tried to detect breathing—the cycle of exhalation and inhalation that might’ve suggested he was struggling to resurface. When I touched his wrists or the swollen veins on his arms I could not be sure if what I felt was a pulse or the throbbing of injured nerves. His body seemed to be sinking, collapsing on itself—his cheeks, the hollow at the base of his throat, the basin of his chest. I was witnessing the slow concaving of a life beneath the weight of unimaginable brutality, one layer of suffering amassed upon another.

  With my left arm, I cradled your father as if he were an instrument, the most sacred of all, and with the blade in hand, the plectrum held firm—like the sharpened tip of a lute player’s bow—I swept my right arm and, in a single clean stroke, played the only note left to play.

  A sob. A howl. An animal’s cry escaped my throat. I pulled him closer to me, rocking us both, burying my face in the pool of our spilled humanity.

  When the guards heard Tun’s anguished cry, they burst into the room, revealing a reddish full moon at twilight in the open doorway. For his unforgivable transgression, robbing the Organization of its authority to determine the time and manner of a man’s death, he was punished even more savagely than before. At the height of his agony, Tun misread the changing atmosphere, the prolonged gunfire, the lapses in guard surveillance, the urgent hushed exchanges. Just weeks after Sokhon’s death, Democratic Kampuchea collapsed against the invading forces from Vietnam, revealing in its retreat a ravaged land and people.

  Into this broken landscape, Tun wandered, dragging his mutilated self, the limbs now unshackled but severely encumbered by injuries both recent and old. At one point, feeling the phantom weight of the chain that for so long had bound his wrists, he looked down and noted his swollen fingers, the bloody and purulent tips, some with half-torn nails, others without nails at all. They did not look like human hands, more like claws belonging to some buried creature that had dug its way out of the grave. He remembered the last few sessions as one interminable stretch, the pliers exacting payment again and again. Such steady fingers you have, holding that blade, hiding it from us. Let’s see how steady they are now . . . Then, he regained consciousness one day to find that abruptly everything stopped. No more taunting voices, no more torture, no more guards. Just a suspended disquiet, followed by a hollow stillness, as if some monstrous presence had put down its club and trident, all its implements, and vacated the premises, disappearing into thin air.

  A group of bedraggled, emaciated townsfolk appeared a day or two later, unlocking the cells, setting the surviving prisoners free. The man who unshackled Tun said, heaving in his own wretchedness, “There were rumors.” He looked down, ashamed. “No, more than that . . . We heard the tormented screams, the dying pleas. We smelled the awful stench all around us. But we didn’t want to believe. How could they turn a temple into such a place? Now we see.” Again, he looked down in shame. “The earth will never forgive us.” Among the thousands of victims brought to the prison over the months and years, Tun was one of the few to walk out of the gate that day.

  Now, as he stumbled through the town, he could not tell the living from the dead. Both haunted him. Unable to bear the presence of either, he gathered what he could—a length of rope, discarded clothes, a rusty hatchet, trifling scraps of abandoned food—and headed into the hills. He knew how to survive in the jungle. He’d done it once before. Besides, it wasn’t survival he sought so much as solitude. After months amidst the howls of torture, he wished for nothing more than a muted vanishing, in the way a dying tree might recede from sight, suffocated by mosses and clinging vines. There was a real chance that he may end violently: a tiger could attack and eat him alive, but still he would know that its ferocity was motivated by hunger, not hate. He’d rather confront the impartial cruelty of nature. If other human beings could do what he and his fellow countrymen had done to one another, then he wanted no part of this race. He did not understand how and why he survived, but until death arrived, he sought a humanless existence.

  In the jungle, he began to heal, his strength reasserting itself, only to realize he was not alone. Another self had taken root inside of him, with a will stronger than his own. Should you come out the lone victor in this battle, then find my daughter, find my wife . . . take my place. At first he tried to silence it like he did the other voices in his head. When that failed, he beseeched it to go away, he reasoned and cajoled, offering explanations on the inanity of certain hopes, the merit of acceptance. There is peace in letting go. You of all people should know this. He argued, and argued, to the point that he often lost track of which side of the argument he was on, which identity was his own and which was subsumed—exhumed. You promised me, Tun. Who was he addressing now? Who was he, this self that survived, this body that walked and talked, arising into its own? At times, he felt like a crazed animal, a tiger stalking its tail, circling its own shadow. It’s just as well . . . that I never had the chance to bury it. The drum, and the other instruments. The music will endure . . . Round and round it spun, invoking the cadence of another promise, a pact made all the more powerful because it was pledged to oneself. I would use the rest of the time to make other instruments, bringing together those for the dead and those for the living, fusing two disparate ensembles to create a unique one . . . Yes, sacrilegious, I know. But then again, I had yet to die. The words gained clarity, took on urgency, propelling him toward a path. He emerged from isolation and found his way to the village where the instruments had been left, to reclaim them, to see what remained. To know for certain that some part of him—Sokhon—lived, and triumphed. The truth will echo through, even under the weight of a mountain of forced confessions.

  Tun found the instruments, which had been rescued and cared for by a fellow musician, the head of the village musical troupe, a former cadre himself who had barely escaped the purge. As for Sokhon’s lost family, the villagers weren’t even aware he had a wife and daughter to begin with. If, as Tun had once believed, there was a chance they may still be alive, then how would he confront them? The weight of what he’d done descended upon him again. What possibility had he severed? He wondered if he’d misread the signals at the end. Misread the most important thing. That sudden brief flicker in Sokhon’s frozen gaze, which, Tun had thought in his confusion and agony, was a glint of light reflecting off the raised, moving blade. When it was done, the blade having dropped to the floor unnoticed, Sokhon closed his eyes. Tun howled. The strength it must’ve taken to close those eyes.

  Tun left the village, gathering the instruments like the cherished remains of his friend. Music . . . or revolution, Sokhon had said. Before us lay these two paths . . . Perhaps it was not too late. In another village, Tu
n began a new life, hiding himself in music, in the anonymity of a street performer. Every now and then, he’d pick up the sampho and tap it gently, remembering Sokhon’s hidden invocation, searching for the truth it might reveal. But he heard nothing, only the secret incantation of his own heart. Mercy . . . or murder? Which had he committed? Again and again, it echoed.

  “For the last twenty-five years, I’ve asked myself this question, lived with the burden of that choice.” He looks up, facing her in the gathering night. “It was mid-December 1978 when I last held your father. It was the dry season, like now . . .”

  Yet, he notes in this fading light, the monsoon has descended upon her, soaking her chin, the front of her blouse, her scarf. She is shivering. Still, she stays rooted to the spot, hands clasped in her lap, fighting her own collapse. Sita, he wants to say, but remembers whose heart he’s breaking.

  “Suteera . . .” He wishes now only to hold her. “Suteera, had I known our release from Slak Daek was just breaths away, I would not have carried out our pact. But that is the terrible nature of choice—right or wrong, one only learns after, if at all.”

  Teera leans over the trestle desk by the window and pushes the shutters open, latching them in place against the sudden gusts of wind rising sporadically from the water surrounding the peninsula. The sun has climbed past the window, out of her direct gaze, cresting the row of tall areca palms bordering Yaya’s property, and, through the drooping bracts of fruits and fronds, Teera sees Ravi, the eldest granddaughter, lighting the circle of earthen braziers in the outdoor cooking area. Tendrils of smoke coil upward and vanish with the cool breeze. The air is redolent of charcoal and firewood, the warmth of waking.

  Teera takes a deep breath, stilling herself for a moment. It’s a stunning location at the tip of the peninsula, facing the Mekong, with the Tonle Sap River curving behind. At the confluence, the waters of the Himalayan peaks and the Tonle Sap Lake merge, flowing on to the Delta and the South China Sea. Everything is connected, she thinks. All is reachable in some way—the discernible and the indiscernible, the past and the future . . . The plot of land is not big, but because it parallels Yaya’s more spacious grounds, with no fence dividing them, the rectangular strip appears open, borderless, rolling toward the water. Even now, in the middle of the dry season, she can spot a string of floating communities clinging to the far shores, the boats swaying in the wind at low tide amidst the exposed stilts of huts perched on the slopes. During the rainy season, Teera imagines, when the fishing nomads traverse the surging rivers, their sampans and canoes popping up in spontaneous clusters, it must bear an astonishing resemblance to Elephant Tusk Landing. It’s obvious why Narunn has held out for this piece of land all these years, drawn as he is to the water, the rise and fall of the flood pulse, the shifting geography of home. So close to the city, it is a rare find.

  Teera surveys the tiny abode they’ve occupied these past several weeks—the single room with its walls and floor of aged koki wood, the vaulted ceiling lined with woven rattan, shuttered windows on three sides, and off to one side the open-air bathroom, with its mini-sink, tiled shower corner, and toilet nook beneath a patch of skyline. The entrance door leads down to a narrow flight of stairs wedged against the tree trunk. Everything is miniature, an existence of half steps and delicate expressions. The previous owner, a Cambodian architect trained in Thailand, had built it as his weekend studio, a retreat from the city where he could work in solitude. Set far back in one corner of the land under a giant gnarled mango tree, atop pillars painted a flat, earthy tone, the whole structure resembles an oversize spirit house where mechas tik mechas dey—those unseen guardians of the water and land—might seek refuge from the rapid development on the peninsula.

  Teera opens the other windows. Light streams in, carpeting the floor where at night they spread out their sleeping mats, a big one for her and Narunn, and a small one for Lah, their spaces separated by a folding wooden screen. She hears the two now moving about the terra-cotta-tiled patio beneath the house, their voices mingling with the wind chime as they try to work out where to hang it—on one of the beams, or on one of the smaller trees nearby? “Pa-Om, how about there, beneath Ma-Mieng’s window? So she can hear it when she writes . . .” Father-Uncle, Mother-Auntie. This is what the little one has decided on her own to call them, and every time Teera hears it, something in her breaks into a million pieces, only to coalesce anew, larger and more whole. “Yes,” Narunn says, lowering his voice. “This way Ma-Mieng will never get lost. When she hears it, she’ll come back from her flight.” Lah lets out a muffled delight, as if colluding in some subterfuge. Teera hears them walking to the storage shed attached to one side of the house and rummaging through it, looking for the ladder and tools to hang the wind chime.

  She sits down at the desk, her journal opened before her. The trestle desk and chair are the only furniture in the tiny abode, parting gifts left by the architect after he learned that Teera writes. To her left, by the bathroom door, is a closet with just enough space for clothes and other essentials. To her right, small floating shelves of books and knickknacks line the wall by the window. The rest of her belongings are stored at the hotel, where she still takes Lah to swim some afternoons. They need very little, she’s found.

  Still, Narunn said during their ritual walk at dawn, he’d like something bigger—“a bit more of a home . . . than this beautiful birdhouse.” He has just enough savings left to be able to begin constructing, and has even enlisted the generosity of the architect, who promised to draft a plan and put together a team of local artisans and builders. He’ll keep the apartment at the White Building solely as his clinic so that he can see more patients. He’s also applied for a trainee position with an international team of forensic scientists preparing for a possible tribunal. It’s a long shot, he admits, but if it were really necessary he could always work for a government hospital. In any case, Teera should not worry, he assured her, as if sensing a fluttering in her heart and concluding that the only remedy was not to ask for or expect any commitment, anything she might take as confining. He could look after Lah on his own, he said. The little girl has become his vocation, and he is grateful to be summoned to protect a life in this time of need. He often wonders about the child in his mother’s womb—whether it was a boy or a girl. He waited until Lah ran ahead, out of hearing range, before saying, “No matter what happens, whether you stay or go back to America, I want you to know that you’ll always have a home and a family to return to.” He made a sweeping gesture of the whole place, their joint grounds, his and Yaya’s. Teera swallowed, unable to express all that was surging through her.

  I came raging against the loss, she thinks now, scribbling the words in her journal, against this land, only to be embraced by it as if I’d never left. Five months ago, she arrived with the notion that her sojourn would be temporary, that she’d be in and out quickly, that, as stated on the various arrival forms she’d filled out on the plane, her place of residence, her home, was the United States, and so was her nationality. Yet, she remembers, all that was noted at the airport immigration check, the only detail of import, was her place of birth, and, like for all those returning from the diaspora to this tattered homeland, her American passport was stamped with a visa marked “Permanent.”

  I will stay . . . For how long, she can’t say. The dissolution of home requires only walking away, a single flight across the borders, but finding it again takes a lifetime of returning. For now, I will stay . . . because part of my home is you, this budding existence we share with Lah, the whole we are trying to patch together from the fragments. She wishes Narunn to know this.

  As for the tremor, this fluttering he detected, it’s not fear of entrapment but the release of what has been imprisoned inside of her. She’s not sure what to call it now. It ceases to be what it was—anguish, grief, despair. It surrounds her—like a florescence of dust motes in the sunlight—and yet, it no longer possesses the weight and solidity to drag her to the bottom, to th
e darkness within, as it did those days right after she and the Old Musician spoke. Instead, it moves with her, rising when she rises, sitting when she sits. The sorrow of knowing. It’s clear that she can put the dead to rest, bury the ghosts, but not the knowledge. What she knows now will become part of her, an abiding consciousness.

  Perhaps, Teera thinks, this is what we all live with as a people, the painful awareness that this history—war, atrocity, genocide, whatever its name—surrounds us persistently, at times binding like a metal chain, other times incorporeal as dust. Even so, we can still move forward, with the small choices we make each day. To love, to harbor and protect, to rebuild.

  She hears playful shouting and looks up from her writing to see the men of Yaya’s household carting materials—poles, ropes, stakes, tarps—to construct a canopy for the ceremony later this morning. Narunn strolls over to meet them, Lah bouncing on his shoulders, the wind chime still jangling from her hand, their endeavor to hang it postponed momentarily. After a boisterous exchange of greetings, Narunn gestures to the middle of the plot, where the future house will stand. This is where the men will raise the canopy, with a platform underneath for the monks and straw mats all around for guests. In a few short hours, the Venerable Kong Oul, along with some novices, will arrive to bless the land. There will be chanting, and afterward the Old Musician will offer an invocation to the spirits, asking for their protection and benevolence, their forgiveness for any trespassing.