Three Flames

by Alan Lightman

  For the next week, Pich wasn’t feeling well, and Kamal had to work the farm by himself. Pich spent the week mostly hanging around the house, going out occasionally to talk to neighbors who hadn’t gone to the fields, complaining of pains in his stomach and back, complaining of getting old. In the house, he continued talking about Sreypov’s marriage, but nobody would listen. He didn’t bother bathing and started smelling bad, possibly to punish them. “Don’t tell me what to do,” he snapped at Ryna when she suggested he take a swim in the river to clean off. A couple of nights, he stayed out drinking and came home wrung out and yellow in the face. “Old age,” he said. “I never thought I’d be this old.” He was fifty-eight.

  Sreypov found that she couldn’t look at him anymore. Now he had two daughters who wouldn’t look at him. Could this go on for the rest of their lives? And she was brooding about what she could do to avoid the marriage. Maybe she could take a bus to Phnom Penh and live with her uncle there. Or maybe something else. The dark thing churned in her stomach.

  One late afternoon toward the end of the week, Pich came home with a smile on his face. “I’ve got some good news,” he said. “I talked to Mr. and Mrs. Ly. They give their approval to their son marrying Daughter Sreypov. It will be a great, great wedding. It’ll be the greatest wedding that’s ever happened in Praek Banan.” As he was making this announcement, Sreypov sat on the bamboo floor without looking up, at work on her school lessons, and Ryna and Theary were painting faces on the side of a cardboard box.

  Ryna said: “Husband, why did you speak to the Lyses?”

  “Why would you ask me such a silly question, Mae Wea?” said Pich. “We’ve been talking about this matter for months now.” Pich was sweaty and took off his shirt and dropped it on the floor. “I’m the head of the house,” he said. “I make the decisions that are best for the family. This is great news.”

  “What you think is best for the family,” said Ryna. “What you think. But you know Sreypov doesn’t want to get married. What are you doing to your daughters? Our daughters.” Ryna was shouting now, a rare thing. Theary started crying, and Thida took her behind the hanging sheet. “What you did to poor Nita,” shouted Ryna. “She didn’t want to get married. You sent her off to Battambang with that jerk husband. And what you did to Thida. How could you do such a filthy thing to our daughter? I’m not letting you do this to our Sreypov. Never again. She wants to finish high school and to go to university. That’s what she’s going to do. She’ll be the first person in our family to go to university. I wanted to finish high school when I got married. Do you remember? I was fifteen years old. But you said no. You put me to work on the farm. It’s not going to happen again. You’ve ruined two daughters. You’re not ruining the third.”

  As Ryna was shouting, Pich nodded his head slowly, as if hearing out the petty complaints of a child.

  Sreypov put her lessons down and stood next to her mother.

  Pich pounded his chest. “I carry the weight of this family,” he said. “Remember that. All of you.” He pounded his chest again. “My family goes back four generations in Praek Banan. My grandfather was village chief. I could have been village chief if I’d wanted.” Thida came back from behind the females’ curtain holding Theary in her arms. Pich glanced at her as if she were a fly that had buzzed into the room. “I am the provider. I am the head of the family. The rest of you just complain. Mr. Ly will take care of Sreypov. He’ll take care of us, too. I don’t deserve to be poor. My family comes from royalty. Remember the plague on our crops. We barely survived. We’re not rich people. Mr. Ly will give our family what we deserve.”

  “I’d rather be poor,” said Thida. She crossed the room and hugged her mother.

  “I’m not getting married,” said Sreypov. Was this the moment? Was this finally the moment to do something? Her hands were shaking, and she could feel her mother shaking beside her. She felt as if she were looking at the scene from outside, with every detail frozen in place—the light streaming through the window behind her father, the women’s curtain rippling slightly in the tiny breeze that blew through the room, the dark sacks of rice in the corner that looked like old men squatting on the floor, the smell of the car battery. Was this the moment?

  “I’m your father,” shouted Pich, “and you’ll do what I tell you.”

  “No,” said Sreypov.

  “You’re living in my house,” shouted Pich.

  “I’ll go to Phnom Penh. Or I’ll move in with Kamal.”

  “Kamal does what I tell him.”

  “I’ve talked to Kamal,” said Sreypov. “He’s on my side.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Talk to him yourself. I talked to him just a few days ago.”

  Pich’s face was a fury. Without bothering to put his shirt on, he left the house.

  He didn’t come back for a week. Thida, Ryna, Sreypov all knew that the earth had tilted, that continents had slid into the sea, perhaps permanently. But the happening was so unfathomable that they couldn’t discuss it. So they went about their routines almost in silence—cooking and cleaning, shopping and homework, playing with Theary—as if everything were normal, a pretend normal.

  When Pich did return one evening, retching and jaundiced, he was so weak he couldn’t climb the ladder. After Ryna helped him up, he sank to the floor. His eyes were yellow and wild. He rolled over and stared at Sreypov. “You’ve done this to me, Daughter.” He doubled up in pain. “You’ve cursed me. Out there in the night fields. Nobody knows what you do out there. You put a curse on me.”

  Sreypov glanced at her father writhing on the floor and thought that maybe he was right. Maybe this was the dark thing she’d seen in her mind. Maybe the neighbors had been right all along. She had the bad blood that could not be changed. That night, she buried her blasphemous journal behind the house. But she covered the spot with three rocks so she could find it later if she wanted to.

  IV.

  I’d like to go to the end of the world,

  To explore all that is there,

  Also all that is not—

  I wouldn’t care.

  No soil, no wind, no sound,

  But beautiful stars all around.

  Pich had been lying on his sleeping mat for two weeks, getting thinner and thinner. Everything he ate went right through him. Ryna kept cleaning up his messes and washing his soiled pants. He itched incessantly and sometimes threw off his clothes and scratched until his skin bled. Light bothered him. So the family hung sheets and clothes over the windows and door frame to block out the sun. Loud sounds also annoyed him. So the family kept their voices to whispers. To Sreypov, it didn’t seem like a house anymore. They lived in a weird twilight cave. The cave smelled. And her father looked like a strange withered thing. In a daze, she studied her school books by the light of a kerosene lamp. She was certain now that this was the thing that she’d set into motion. But she couldn’t see where it was going.

  “Maybe you’ve got a bad case of malaria, or dengue fever,” Ryna suggested to Pich. “You’ll get better if you can keep the food inside you.” “I feel like shit,” said Pich. “I’m cursed.” He clutched at his stomach and moaned. “I was cursed when I was a kid. Damn them all. My parents said I was the cause of my little sister dying. They said I had thrown out a curse. But it was me who was cursed.” He stopped again and held his stomach. “And now I’ve been cursed again. By my own family.” “No one has cursed you,” said Ryna, and she massaged Pich’s forehead with a wet sponge. Every few minutes, she dipped it into the ointments and herbs brought by the neighbors.

  A doctor came from Praek Khmau. He examined Pich and said that it was probably some liver disease, or possibly hepatitis. Auntie Makara offered to pay for Pich to go to a hospital in Phnom Penh, but he was too weak to travel. “When you’re feeling better,” said Ryna. “These doctors are idiots,” said Pich.

  Pich began muttering about Sreypov’s wedding again. But he wasn’t shouting anymore. He was talking backward
and forward, like Grandma Lo-la talked. Sreypov figured that if her father got well, it might be the same as before, and she would need to move out of the house. But it probably wouldn’t be the same. Look at her father now. He’d shrunk. It wasn’t only his body. She could hardly believe what had happened. Only a few weeks ago, her father had been a mountain, and now he was this withered thing who could barely get up from the floor. Yet he was still her father. She wanted to love him, even though she hated him. She knew he’d been poor all his life. She hadn’t wanted this to happen, him withered and unable to rise from the floor. She looked at her poor father in the dim light and the stench and couldn’t believe what she saw. Her head throbbed.

  Kamal came over most evenings and sat on the floor next to Pich, bringing porridge and rubbing balms. He didn’t talk about anything except the farm and also some small things going on with him and Somrith. He was managing the farm by himself, he said. Pich heard that and nodded.

  Some of Pich’s friends also visited—Sayon, Bunrouen, Vitu—one at a time. They gasped when they saw his wasted condition. The room smelled, and there was no ventilation because all the windows and doorway were covered. Nobody could stand visiting more than twenty minutes. “The idiot doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong with me,” said Pich, trying to sit up to greet his friends.

  Makara summoned Venerable Khim Ry. The next morning, the old monk laboriously climbed the ladder into the house. For an hour, he chanted prayers. Afterward, he accepted the rice that Ryna offered and put it in his alms bowl.

  Another week passed. Pich’s cheeks had sunk and his eyes had receded back in their sockets. On a Tuesday morning, Lakhena arrived. She waited at the bottom of the ladder. “Go away,” said Ryna. Lakhena just stood there. Every few minutes, Ryna would go to the doorway, pull the sheets aside, and look to see if Lakhena had gone.

  “Who is it?” said Pich.

  “Lakhena,” said Ryna.

  “She shouldn’t come here.”

  “I told her to go away.”

  After an hour, Ryna went and looked again. Lakhena hadn’t moved. Ryna sighed and pulled the sheets aside and beckoned. Lakhena came up the ladder and into the house. When she saw Pich, she winced and sat down beside him. Pich looked at her but didn’t say anything.

  Lakhena stroked Pich’s cheek. She looked around the house. “I’ve always wondered what your house looked like,” she whispered to Ryna. Still with her hand on Pich’s cheek, Lakhena turned to Sreypov. “I know that you are taking good care of him,” she said.

  Sreypov nodded. She didn’t know what to say or do with this woman in the house. Then she felt tears on her cheek.

  “I love him,” said Lakhena.

  After a few minutes, Lakhena left. “She shouldn’t have come,” said Pich.

  One evening a couple of days after Lakhena’s visit, during an especially hot and dry period when the red dust from the road floated up into the house between the poles of the bamboo floor, Pich stopped his crazy muttering, and a calmness came over him. He told Ryna that he was dying. He wanted to say goodbye to the children.

  “You aren’t dying,” said Ryna.

  “I know I am,” said Pich. “It’s my body. I’m dying.” He hadn’t eaten much of anything since Lakhena’s visit. Sreypov listened to him talking in his withered voice and thought to herself that maybe he wanted to die. His power was gone.

  “You aren’t dying,” Ryna said again. They could hear the chanting of a monk just beyond the house. Ryna dabbed at her moist eyes with the corner of her sarong. “You just rest. Would you like to hear some music?” Pich didn’t answer. He closed his eyes. “I’d like to play some Sinn Sisamouth,” Ryna said. “Very quiet.” She turned on the radio and tuned it to the Sinn Sisamouth channel. “We used to listen to Sinn Sisamouth all the time. Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” said Pich.

  “He’s an old singer,” said Sreypov. She had little interest in Sinn Sisamouth, but she wanted to say something, to be part of the conversation. Something new was happening, and she wanted to be part of it. The man who used to be her father was strangely gone, and there was this new person lying on the floor, a new father. They had a new family, and she wanted to be part of it.

  “Old, but good,” said Ryna. “Your father likes Sinn Sisamouth. I do too. Is the music OK?” said Ryna. Pich nodded.

  A love song ebbed and flowed through the house. The rhythm was deliberate and slow and Sinn’s honeyed voice filled with longing. As they listened, Ryna helped her husband turn and lie on his stomach. Then she pulled up his shirt and began rubbing his back with the fifty-riel steel coin she kept in her trunk. She pressed the coin deep into his flesh. He moaned, but it was hard to tell whether it was a moan of pain or the alleviation of pain. “Do you remember when I was sick with pneumonia?” said Ryna. Pich nodded. “You used this same coin on me. This same one.” Ryna kept rubbing with the coin, back and forth, back and forth, pushing and pressing until she’d made rows of red bruises on both sides of his back. He moaned again.

  “You’ve been a good wife,” Pich whispered. Ryna cradled his cheek, as Lakhena had done. “I blinded my brother,” said Pich.

  “What are you talking about?” said Ryna.

  Pich tried to turn over but didn’t have the strength. “Chann, my brother. I jabbed a stick in his eye. I made him blind. He’s been living with a cousin in Prey Veng for I don’t know how long. He might even be dead by now.”

  “You’re talking crazy talk,” said Ryna.

  “I did it,” said Pich. “I wanted to do it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ryna.

  Pich let out a sigh and began turning the fifty-riel steel coin over and over in his hand. “What time is it?” he said.

  “Eight.”

  “I always liked Sinn Sisamouth,” said Pich. “I don’t know why. My parents listened to him.”

  “We listened to ‘Srolanh Srey Touch’ on our first wedding anniversary,” said Ryna. “Do you remember?”

  “I don’t know how you could remember that,” said Pich. He had propped himself up on his elbows and was straining to see in the dim light. “Can I talk to Thida? Where’s Thida?”

  “You need to rest now,” said Ryna.

  “Thida,” Pich said. Thida had been playing with Theary. She put down the toy blocks and stood over her father, turning away from his gaze. She would never forgive him, Sreypov thought to herself. “Thida,” he said. “Thida.” Thida looked over at her mother. Then she went behind the women’s hanging sheet, where she began to cry.

  “Where’s Sreypov?” said Pich. “Is Sreypov in the house?”

  “She’s here,” said Ryna.

  “Mi-oun,” said Pich.

  “Yes,” said Sreypov. She sat next to her father. For the first time in nearly a month, she looked into his eyes. And he looked back, a long steady gaze. At that moment, she knew he was dying. Her second father, this man on the floor, was passing away. He turned his body toward her and sighed, his breath heavy. “Daughter.” He paused. “Why do you want to go to university?”

  Sreypov was startled by the question. For a few moments, she couldn’t answer. “I want to continue my studies,” she said. Pich stared at her with eyes yellow and still. “The world is big,” said Sreypov. “I want to see it.”

  Pich nodded.

  Sreypov dug up her journal, dirt-stained but readable. That night, after returning from the fields, she lay on her sleeping mat, thinking. She could hear her father’s heavy breathing, and her mother singing softly to him.

  Her father had been sick for six weeks now. He looked like a skeleton. But he didn’t seem to be in pain anymore. Perhaps he wouldn’t die, after all. Sreypov wanted him to stay alive. She also wanted dear Nita to be alive again. She wanted Thida to forget about the brothel, like it never happened. Was that possible? She wanted her mother to be a star in the sky. Everything was so strange now. Mae decided everything. The family was closer now than it ever had been before.
At the same time, it didn’t feel like a family anymore. It was something new, and changing. They were like pieces of things moving around in the dark. Was it all one accident after another?

  Earlier that day, in the market, she’d seen Auntie Makara, who gave her some tea for Father. Auntie Makara said it would make him get well. The leaves of tea were wrapped in a piece of blue paper with a pink string around it. Auntie Makara and Ryna had been friends for forty years. Sreypov tried to imagine her mother forty years ago, when she was a little girl, when she had her whole life ahead of her. Sreypov smiled, but it was a sad smile. She wished that she’d known her mother then, forty years ago. All of that time. Gone, just like that. Most of Mae’s life gone, just like that. Sometimes years seem like seconds. Then Sreypov pictured herself in the fields, looking up at the stars. They were so quiet. They saw everything that was going on down here. But they always remained the same.

  Notes and Acknowledgments

  I am the founder of the Harpswell Foundation, which works to advance a new generation of women leaders in Cambodia and all of Southeast Asia.