Music of the Ghosts

by Vaddey Ratner

  The Old Musician drinks the remains of his tea. A procession of voices floats past his doorway. “Let’s go, little one,” he murmurs, picking up the lute, waking it from its slumber near the wall. “It’s time for the ceremony.”

  * * *

  The Rattanaks and their boy, Makara, along with relatives and friends, are gathering in front of the sala bonh, the open-air ceremony hall, where the ritual for calling back the spirit will take place. The sun has set, streaking the sky yellow and orange, reminiscent of spirits in flight. Before them, the Mekong darkens, a long, sinuous shroud, boats and sampans swaying on its surface like ornaments tentatively fastened to a tapestry. Suddenly it seems this mighty ancient river, cut deep into the earth centuries ago, could be lifted and shaken loose, smoothed of its wrinkles and creases. At these twilight hours, the world appears insubstantial. Vaporous as a child’s etching on a fogged surface, the Old Musician thinks. He remembers. And once again, his daughter’s voice comes to him unbidden.

  Look what I drew, Papa!—You and me! It was a misty morning, and she nodded at a scene she’d rendered on their car window. What’s this long thing here? he asked, his mind elsewhere. A naga serpent?—A caterpillar? She laughed. No, you silly old papa. It’s a river, with other rivers connecting to it, just like the one in front of us. We’re going to travel on it. We’re going to go places together. She must have believed then that she would accompany him on all his journeys. He had been suddenly seized with fear. Would she grow up to love another more than she loved him in that moment? Here comes our boat! she exclaimed, adding to the drawing, fingers moving constantly. With the head of a phoenix! Or should I make it a plane?

  He lifts his hand as if to wipe away the scene. Dr. Narunn appears beside him. “Your path is clear,” his young friend assures, obviously mistaking his gesture as an attempt to find his way in the dusk.

  He lowers his hand and turns to the ordained doctor. “Who was it, Venerable?”

  “I’m sorry?” Dr. Narunn seems perplexed.

  “Earlier this afternoon. You said there was a visitor in the prayer hall.”

  “Oh, yes! No one really. Just as I suspected, a foreigner. Asian, though. Maybe Burmese? Or possibly even Indian—with big, beautiful eyes. In any case, a tourist, who didn’t speak a word of Khmer. Didn’t speak at all actually!” Dr. Narunn runs a hand over his shorn head, as if suddenly conscious of his exposed scalp. “There she was, doing her own walking meditation, and I came up the steps from behind, a bald man in a dress no less, speaking to her in our peculiar temple dialect—‘Would the devotee like to pay homage to Lord Buddha?’ Ridiculous, isn’t it!” The young doctor laughs, his whole face flushed, obviously embarrassed by the memories of the strange encounter and his even stranger greeting. “I could’ve sworn she was Khmer, one of us. But she flew off like a creature from another world, her pralung fleeing ahead, as the rest of her ran to catch up. I think I scared the living spirit out of our visitor! Wouldn’t be surprised if she never set foot at another Khmer temple.”

  “What does she look like, Venerable?”

  “She was very . . .”

  “Lovely.”

  “Lost, I was going to say.” The doctor narrows his eyes with amused suspicion. “But yes, lovely too. Very much so. Lovely and lost.”

  With his attuned hearing, the Old Musician recognizes the unmistakable tenor of infatuation in Dr. Narunn’s voice, like that of an amorous schoolboy describing a pretty girl he’s caught sight of. But, at the moment, he doesn’t have the peace of mind to probe further into the doctor’s heart, as his own is pounding inside his ears. She was here. He’s absolutely certain of it now. She stood on this ground. She might even have seen him. Suteera. He says her name silently to himself, as if to call her back, then just as suddenly doubts his imagining. Such coincidence borders on madness.

  “What did you say?” Dr. Narunn asks.

  “Nothing, Venerable.” He swallows, sorrow and hope caught in his throat.

  The lok gru achar—the temple officiant—assigned by the abbot to facilitate the ceremony emerges from the gathered throng and, bowing to Dr. Narunn, says, “Everyone is here, Venerable. We are ready to begin.”

  The group forms a circle around a banana trunk cut approximately to Makara’s height and placed in a clay pot. The tree is wrapped in raw silk and decorated with its own fruits and leaves as well as cubes of sugarcane on bamboo sticks, treats to entice Makara’s spirit to return. Dr. Narunn, as the presiding monk, the main spiritual presence, walks around the effigy and chants the sutra in Pali that commences every act of worship. Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhassa . . . An homage to the Buddha. But in his usual style, the young doctor follows it with an interpretation in the vernacular, slightly different from the habitually memorized words—“Let us always honor one who is learned, wise, and compassionate . . .” He sprinkles the ground with lotus-scented water from a bronze bowl to consecrate the area and ward off delinquent sprites that might be gathering to watch, especially ones clever enough to assume the traits of the sick boy and enter his body in order to partake of the food. The Old Musician knows that Dr. Narunn does not subscribe to these superstitions, but as a physician, he is willing to aid in any process of healing, be it conventional or fanciful.

  Looking at Makara, the Old Musician wishes he possessed Dr. Narunn’s encompassing hopefulness. The teenager resembles a living corpse. Barely able to stand on his own, Makara is propped upright by the elbows, his parents on either side of him. In contrast to his brand-new school uniform of white shirt and black slacks, and recently washed appearance, the twelve-year-old bears all the telltale symptoms, as Dr. Narunn has described, of a meth addict.

  In the few short months since the Old Musician last saw him, Makara has suffered great weight loss, rendering him old and skeletal. A few of his front teeth are missing, and those remaining are blackened, decaying against inflamed gums. While it is obvious the Rattanaks have attempted to scrub their son clean for the ceremony, Makara emits not only a nauseating odor from his rotting mouth but the strange musky stench of cat urine from his entire body. What’s more, the boy’s once youthful face is now ravaged by acne and rashes, some bleeding and infected from what appears to be self-inflicted vicious scratching. Yet, the most shocking change is in the boy’s eyes, the way they shift about in apparent paranoia, looking at once vacant and possessed, as if tormented by phantoms only he sees.

  If man possessed a monster’s soul, this is what it would look like. A creature peering from within its human frame, terrified by its capacity to destroy not only others but ultimately itself. Once he too was such a creature staring at his murky reflection in the pool of his urine after a prison guard at Slak Daek had beaten him to a pulp. Still, even as he wished more than anything to die, some mysterious part of him fought to stand erect, rise to take another blow, another breath. Why? He didn’t know. He’s not certain if he knows now.

  He ponders the ceremony taking place in front him, this tradition based on the belief that a person’s pralung—made up of nineteen different traits, each acting like a unique minor spirit on its own, all sharing a kind of vulnerability—is so fragile that it can be scared into fleeing at the slightest provocation. If so, then what is the force that stands its ground and says to death, Even as I fall, I do not submit to you? Does it have a name at all? Perhaps this force, or spirit, draws strength from its namelessness? He wonders if its invincibility is precisely its unnameable caprice, its alchemy. That ability, when confronted with the end, to transform itself into whatever trait a person needs—be it courage, defiance, or simply stubbornness. Why won’t you die? another prison guard, a former soldier of his, once murmured in privacy. Why are you so pigheaded? There was a hint of compassion in the guard’s hushed, frustrated growl. It was clear the youth believed death was more merciful than that hellhole. Why do you still hang on? Yes, why did he? Why has he hung on still after all these years?

  The Old Musician forces his mind back to Makara
. Knowing the shantytown where the Rattanaks live, he wonders whether the boy turning to drugs isn’t an attempt to hang on to life in some way, just as he had.

  Dr. Narunn climbs the few short steps to the ceremony hall, joined now by four other younger novices. The monks lower themselves onto the row of cushions atop the straw mats, with the young doctor taking the honored middle seat. They each assume a lotus position, facing the river about ten meters away.

  The lute in hand, the Old Musician follows and takes a seat on the straw mat a bit off to one side. A couple of koan saek—“parakeets,” as they’re called, little orphans who mimic a monastic existence by learning to chant and observe basic precepts but who are still too small to be ordained—enter the hall, each carefully balancing a tray with glasses of water for the monks. Kneeling, they put the trays down, bow three times, place a glass in front of each monk, and again bow three times, their heads touching the floor each time. Then, with their backs bent to keep their heads lower than those of the monks, they exit the ceremony hall the same way they came, pausing briefly to offer a glass of water to the Old Musician as well. For a pair of otherwise rambunctious mischiefs, their steps are so perfectly choreographed that they rouse a chuckle from Dr. Narunn, forcing him to break from the solemn demeanor required for the occasion.

  The Old Musician draws the brass plectrum from his shirt pocket, slips it around the tip of the ring finger of his right hand, pauses in a moment’s concentration, and then plucks the sadiev. He lets the copper string vibrate for a second or two before silencing it with the base of his palm. Grasping the cone-shaped knob of the tuning peg, he tightens the string and plucks it again, his head slightly cocked to one side, his torso leaning forward, listening with his entire body. He repeats the steps several times more, tightening and loosening the solitary copper string until it produces the desired pitch, a tone that articulates the essence of the music he has invoked in his head. Tuning, he used to tell his students, is not about fiddling with a cord or peg but searching for the kernel, that core sound around which the rest of the notes and melodies weave themselves.

  If he could name that vital force akin to pralung—that which had kept him alive all those months in Slak Daek—he would call it music, the incipient resonance from which both the named and nameless emerge.

  He lifts the lute, holding it aslant, letting it stretch from his left collarbone to the right side of his abdomen. With the domed sound box over his heart, he begins to coax out a kind of bampae—a lullaby—gentle and jaunty, each note mimicking the sound of a child’s footfall, a happy skip toward home after a day’s careless wandering.

  The temple officiant guides Makara and his parents into the ceremony hall. Meanwhile the mae gru—a female spiritual medium—leads the relatives and friends in a procession around the hall. Cradling a clay vessel in one arm and waving its lid with the other, the mae gru beckons Makara’s spirit to enter the vessel, her stylized gestures a kind of dance.

  In the countryside, such a procession would weave a path through the forests around the house of the sick person. But here in the city, where life moves at a much faster pace and space is constrained, the group merely circles the ceremony hall thrice.

  The mae gru snaps the lid over the clay vessel, indicating that she has caught Makara’s pralung. The Old Musician eases the tempo, weaving a more sedate phrase. Then, with the sound box directly over his heart, he bends the string, plucks, and releases, ending on a ghost note.

  March 1974. It’s Suteera’s eighth birthday, and they’re celebrating it with a big party, an unusually huge gathering of family and friends. She doesn’t remember it being this grand last year. At some point in the night, her father pulls her aside from the festivities and tells her, in a rather urgent voice, “I’m going off to hide.” Suteera laughs, thinking he—her solemn father—is going to take part in the game of hide-and-seek some of the littler children are playing at the moment. But tears flood his eyes and he quickly gathers her into his arms. Then, in a hushed voice, his cheek against hers, lips grazing her hair, he begins to sing, as he would a lullaby when she was smaller to help her sleep, to ease in their separation during the night.

  “Your birthday smoat,” he says when he’s finished, releasing her from his warm but shaken grip. It suddenly hits her that this isn’t a game, that he is really leaving, and this is his parting gift. She doesn’t want it. But how can you return a song that’s already been sung, silence a poem already spoken? There’s nothing she can do to stop it—to stop herself from turning eight. Suteera wishes there were a clock within reach for her to rewind. But the only ticking she hears is the panic of her own heart. Faster and faster it gallops, as the rest of her stands stock-still. Wait! she wants to cry out, but the word lodges in her throat. Choked, she watches her father turn and disappear from sight.

  Romvong music rises from the garden overlooking the Mekong, the male singer beckons, and the female vocalist croons her response, the pair weaving their steps and gestures around each other. Grown-ups and children alike rush to dance. Cheers erupt, and it seems everyone is singing now. The celebration continues late into the night, indifferent to Suteera’s shock and grief, her inarticulate confusion.

  The next morning she wakes up thinking it was all a dream. But when she goes out to look for her father, he’s nowhere to be found, his absence a palpable gloom hanging over their vast estate, silencing the memories of last night’s festivities.

  Later in the morning, when it seems the household has resurfaced from its collective mourning, Suteera hears voices coming from the wooden pavilion by the water. “We remain who we are, Father, at our peril . . .”

  “Channara, I didn’t give you all that education so that you could run off to the jungle!”

  Her mother and grandfather are in the middle of another tense exchange, while her young aunt Amara listens on silently, forced to stay put by the two combatants who each want her to take their side. But as always Amara shows no sign of getting involved, remaining where she is, if only to bear witness to their words should later one accuse the other of saying what hasn’t been said, as often is the case with Suteera’s mother and grandfather.

  Noting Suteera’s presence, the formidable patriarch fixes his eyes on his elder daughter and growls, “I forbid you to follow him. I forbid you, do you hear?”

  Channara retorts, “There are things beyond even your control, Father, and war is one of them.” She sounds as resolved and unafraid in her erect slenderness as the statesman appears authoritative in his ministerial stance.

  Suteera’s grandfather issues a warning look. “We’ll discuss this later, like adults, among adults.” He strides away, brewing with silent fury.

  As Suteera approaches the pavilion, Amara gets up to leave, but Channara gestures for her younger sister to sit back down. “Please,” she pleads, seeming afraid to be alone with her own daughter. “I need you here . . .” Her words trail.

  The three of them remain silent for some time before Channara begins again, turning to young Suteera. “You know, when I came back from America in 1962, your grandfather had this pavilion built for us, a wedding gift to me and your father.” She lets out a tight, bitter laugh. “Perhaps as a reminder that the reason we have a roof over our heads at all is him. He allows it. We’re all at the mercy of his generosity, his noblesse oblige. He thinks he’s king.”

  Suteera stares at her mother, not knowing what to say, afraid of sounding stupid or childish. It’s tricky to be around her mother when she’s in this mood, unpredictable. She can snap at you or shoot a look that can silence you into submission.

  Channara glances up at the ornate carving of the mythical Rahu straddling the sun and the moon that lines the edge of the roof. “Rahu chap chan,” she says, alluding to the ancient tale that inspired the carving. “The sun and moon are destined lovers. Long ago the gods separated them, tore the lovers apart, believing the unification of their opposite qualities would ignite a cosmic war . . .”

  It’s
so like her mother to try to explain everything through stories. She’s a writer even when she’s not writing. There are of course many legends about the sun and the moon, and Suteera, a child more well read than even most adults around her—the throng of servants working for them—is quite familiar with the tale depicted in the carving, in which the demon Rahu, during the war of the gods, propelled himself between Chandra and Suriya and, when no one was looking, devoured each in turn, causing a total eclipse. But this particular story about the sun and the moon as “destined lovers” torn apart by the gods who feared their union would cause an all-out cosmic war is one Suteera has never heard before. What’s more, it doesn’t make sense. How could they be destined for each other yet easily torn apart?

  “But once in a long while, their paths will cross . . . and when this happens, Suriya and Chandra will swallow each other, darkening the world with their love.”

  Suteera suspects this is one of her mother’s more ironic interpretations of the ancient tale, published under her pen name, Tun Chan. A male name, Channara explained, so that it’s possible for a woman to write and publish. When Suteera’s grandfather had agreed to let his elder daughter take up writing, he’d thought nothing would come of it. But to his chagrin, Channara’s reung toan samai—“modern renderings”—of these complex tales in a series of graphic novels had become especially popular among the illiterate peasants and the urban poor, who, even if they couldn’t read and write, could still make sense of the stories through pictures. This was how Suteera herself had learned to read by the age of four, first drawn to the colorful illustrations, and then prompted by curiosity to connect the words to the actions depicted. Her mother says it has been her intention all along to offer some means of education to those with little or no access to schooling, especially women and girls, who, unlike boys, cannot live at the temple and receive instruction from the monks.