Music of the Ghosts

by Vaddey Ratner

  It had been a quiet, wordless death. Channara died from consuming the same small green fruits that weeks earlier had poisoned Rin, Suteera’s little brother, who’d probably mistaken the fruits for baby mangoes. Her brother was hungry—starving like the rest of them—and, being only two or three, had no way of knowing what was edible, what was not. They found him on the riverbank behind their hut one evening after returning from the fields. He was lying under a row of trees that one of the village elders identified as dao krapoeu—“crocodile’s sword”—with long green lance-like leaves. Her brother was only partially breathing by then, and when Channara picked him up, asking, “Why, why, why?” as she pried from his mouth the remaining bits of what he’d already swallowed, her little brother murmured, “Rice. Mama . . . rice.” Channara lost any semblance of composure then—she screamed, “It’s not rice, baby, it’s not rice!—It’s not even food.” Hours later, Rin stopped breathing altogether, his mouth agape, as if still awaiting the rice that never came.

  After his death, Channara disappeared into herself, in the same way she’d done back home whenever she wrote. Except now, Suteera was certain, her mother would never reemerge, because there was no story to share, no words that could bring her brother back. So, day after day, the silence thickened, and Channara sank deeper into it. Then one day, Suteera found her mother with a bowl of the same green fruits and a dipping mixture of crushed fresh chilies and salt. The desolation in Channara’s eyes as she looked up from her eating told Suteera that it was too late. Grief was its own poison, and Channara’s body was flooded with it.

  Suteera sat down opposite her mother, rocking gently back and forth. Silent rivers cut their faces, plunging into the gulf between them. They did not speak. What could they have said? The same two words knocked at Suteera’s heart—Don’t die. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going through her mother’s mind. Until that moment Suteera had not seen Channara’s vulnerability, a parent’s childlike fragility. Don’t die. Aside from her own impossible wish, she wanted only to comfort her mother in these last hours.

  Sometime in the night Channara died, and Suteera let out a single audible sob when she woke to find her mother breathless beside her on the straw mat.

  When the village cadres learned of the death, they assigned a soldier to take Channara’s corpse away to fertilize the fields, in keeping with revolutionary practice. Suteera, they said, could now go live with her grandparents and aunt in the village where they’d been sent. It would only take a morning to get there by oxcart, but because of what happened, Suteera would be allowed the whole day off from working. She ought to use this time, they told her, to examine her mother’s choice, as she may be called upon to give a critique at the next commune-wide political meeting. Choice? There’s no choice. Death is all there is. Suteera raged against the emptiness, the hateful landscape. The dust rose and silenced her. The only sounds came from the oxcart wheels grinding the bones of the earth.

  * * *

  Teera hears beeping, only to realize it’s from their car. Mr. Chum keeps pressing the horn as they trundle ever cautiously along, passing the flimsy skeleton of a thatched hut on the right and a desiccated palm on the left. The dust has thinned, but it’s still a challenge to see far ahead, and Teera thinks he must be alerting an unsuspecting cow or water buffalo wandering too close to graze on the sporadic clumps of brown grass. Or perhaps there are wild animals on the loose in the vicinity of the sanctuary. Troops of macaques waiting to ambush them. Khmer Rouge soldiers, with AK47s and rocket launchers, belts of bullets draped from their bodies—

  Teera blinks away her fear.

  Mr. Chum’s honking grows insistent. Narunn murmurs something, rising from his slouch, his voice husky with sleep. Lah follows suit, sitting upright in the backseat, rubbing her eyes. “There they are,” Mr. Chum says, sounding suddenly relieved. “Didn’t want to bump into them by mistake in these dirt clouds.”

  The dust slowly begins to settle, and it’s clear why the old driver has been so vigilant. Straight ahead, in a row on either side of the road, dusty gaunt figures crouch with buckets and bowls in hand, tossing water in repeated arcs that wet the ground, their gestures ceremonial—funereal. Teera’s breath catches, and for some seconds she is unsure whether they are phantoms from the past—mere mirage—or actual ghosts rising from the splintered earth. What time period has memory dragged her into now? What unfinished graves have they disturbed? As their car moves nearer, she sees that the figures are mostly elders and children, but their haggardness, their destitution, makes them at first glance indistinguishable one from another.

  “What are they doing?” Teera asks, when at last she finds her voice.

  There is silence in the car, as if such things are inexplicable, defy expression. Teera asks again. Finally Narunn says, “They’re watering the road to keep the dust down. So we can see.” He pauses, clearing his throat. “In return, they hope we’ll give them food, some small change, whatever we can spare.”

  “I don’t understand. How can this be? How can they live . . .” Teera hears the despair in her own voice, something breaking inside herself.

  “Srok yeung . . .” Mr. Chum murmurs, as if “this country of ours” were explanation enough.

  “But where are their homes? There are no huts here, not even trees to offer shade. Where do they come from? And where are their children?—Who cares for them? . . .” Teera grows more agitated with each word.

  “They come from villages around here,” Narunn says, keeping his voice even. “To some who pass by, they are just beggars. But they are grandparents, and the little ones are their grandchildren. Many are orphans because their parents have died.”

  “Of what?”

  “Disease. Hunger. Poverty.”

  “But their heads are shaven . . . Are they in mourning?”

  “Perhaps some are. It’s possible that some have recently lost loved ones. But it’s also because they’ve taken the Buddhist vow of renunciation and, as you know, under normal circumstances, they would be meditating at temples, trying to find peace in their old age.”

  “But the heat—it’s too hot for them to be out there. It’s too hot. They should not be out here. They shouldn’t.”

  “But there they are.”

  There they are. Forfeiting their comfort to stoop on this dusty road and beg for food to feed their children’s children. The simple truth of it slices Teera. She remembers her grandparents, sees them now among these living ghosts in the path of the car—her proud, powerful grandfather hiding stolen grains in his mouth to keep for her when he returned home from the fields; her grandmother tentatively tasting this fruit or that leaf to make sure it wasn’t poison before giving it to her. What kind of mother can’t keep her child alive? her grandmother had wept bitterly that afternoon upon learning the fate of her grandson and elder daughter. At first Suteera thought it an accusation against Channara, but over time—as she watched her grief-stricken grandmother, witnessed her unfaltering gentleness toward others in spite of her own anguish—she would come to understand it as a mother’s indictment against herself. Perhaps, like Channara, her grandmother wanted to die, to punish herself for failing to keep her child alive. Certainly it would’ve been easier for her to let go, to renounce this world with its interminable suffering. But her grandmother lived, carried on, because she had Suteera to look after. Just as Yaya, Teera realizes all of a sudden, must’ve fought to live in order to care for her brood of grandchildren, even as she mourned her own children in the ground.

  Perhaps the question isn’t how anyone can live like this, bearing a lifetime of cruelty and deprivation, but what makes them want to live in a world indifferent to their struggle. What? Is it the recognition that life extends beyond your own being—that it doesn’t reside in you alone but in everyone and everything you wish to see endure?

  A river surges through Teera, flooding her face, the desolation around her. “Please stop the car,” she says, barely able to speak. “I— W-
we can’t just drive past them.”

  Lah, seeing the tears, pulls Teera to her chest. “It’s okay, Mommy,” she says. The child, in her bewilderment, must be confusing Teera with her absent mother. “It’s okay. Don’t look, Mommy. They make you sad. Don’t look at them.”

  “But they have nothing,” Teera sobs, in the way she never could, would never allow herself, when she witnessed her brother’s starvation, the hunger that would kill him. “They have no food, no shade. They have nothing, and they’re giving us their water.” She knows she’s not making any sense.

  “Please don’t cry.” Lah presses Teera’s face tighter against her tiny chest, caressing her. “We can give them our picnic food—I don’t need any! I’m not hungry.”

  Both men are silent. Mr. Chum has managed to pull the car onto the side of the road, parking it on a patch of scraggly, dried-up leafy vines. Lah continues to caress Teera, humming softly now.

  When Teera regains her composure, Narunn, reaching for her hand, asks, “Should we get out and say hello?” Teera hesitates, heart fluttering, then nods.

  As they approach, a throng gathers around them, puzzled, curious. Lah passes out the food Teera brought from the hotel café and the fresh fruits they’d purchased along the way. Mr. Chum, who knew what to expect from having driven this road many times before, starts dispensing the stack of hundred-riel notes Teera saw him change at a gas station earlier. Narunn and Teera contribute some bills of their own to the pile. It’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough, Teera realizes with dismay.

  How is it that even decades after the war the suffering seems ineradicable? In the beginning Teera thought she might become used to it, that its sheer breadth and magnitude would simply numb her. But the longer she stays, the more she struggles with it. A child bathing in an open sewage canal. A mother raking through mounds of trash to feed and clothe her little ones, beneath billboards advertising luxury watches, all-you-can-eat buffets. A sightless father playing his instrument, as his exquisitely poised daughter sings beside him in rags, offering beautiful music to a world that does not deserve it. Each time she encounters them, Teera is gripped by the desire to give away everything. Some days she is driven mad with despair, the sense that there’s not a single thing she can do. Then there are moments, like this, when she feels enraged and inspired in equal measure, because the struggle for breath, for meaning and purpose, is never more courageous than amidst insurmountable injustice.

  They’ve done what they can for the moment. There’s nothing more to give. As they say good-bye, Teera feels a hand grasp hers. She turns toward it, and a toothless grandmother says, “My daughter . . . she was about your age.” The thing about loss is that it rims the silhouette of every face you encounter. “I’m sorry,” Teera tells her, thinking now of the grandmother she abandoned to die in a cave. She says again, “I’m so sorry.”

  The elder nods, lets go.

  * * *

  At the wildlife sanctuary, Lah quickly forgets their earlier sorrow on the road, delighted by every creature they encounter. A baby elephant with a partially ruined ear greets them, extending its trunk toward the little girl in that exhalation of a Cambodian kiss. A peacock shows off its iridescent plumage, and they note that one of its legs is missing. A sun bear with a bandaged paw nuzzles an opened coconut, licking it again and again, savoring every drop of juice. The bear falls on its back, rolling in the dust, the coconut stuck to its face, like a toddler with his bottle.

  In front of a large wired cage, a ragtag group of village children are gearing up for some sort of showdown with the gibbons. One of the boys, with hair as wild and dusty as the monkeys, presses his lips to the cage, gives a little hoot at a solemn-looking female, she hoots back, he does it again, she gets excited, hooting until her body shakes—revved up like an engine for some long minutes—so that she has to hug herself in order to stop. The boy bows, conceding loss, and offers the crowd’s thundering applause to her.

  Narunn goes up to the cage and tries to repeat the boy’s feat, but the gibbon he’s baiting turns its back in gruff defiance. The children laugh, telling him that the male gibbons are stingy and less likely to fall for human tricks. Seizing the opportunity, the boy with wild copper-colored hair quickly appoints himself as their “tour guide,” offering facts and tidbits about the animals they’ve just seen. Teera learns that the animals, like the humans here, have suffered much. They are former victims of one cruelty or another, rescued from illegal trade, from those who sought to sell them for profit, for game and pleasure, or for some misconceived cure for human afflictions. The baby elephant was wounded when a poacher shot and killed its mother. The peacock lost its leg in a trap set up by those who kill such birds for medicine. The sun bear had its paw broken by an owner who thought it a difficult pet because the cub didn’t like being chained by its neck. The owner had sold the cub to a Chinese restaurant specializing in bear paw soup for wealthy Asian businessmen. Seeing the terrified expression on Lah’s face, the boy quickly assures, “But it’s safe now—and happy!” And to prove his point, he raises his arms high and whistles to the sun bear. The little cub stares at him for a moment, then reluctantly abandons the coconut, slowly stands up, and raises its unhurt arm, keeping his bandaged paw lowered. The boy gives the sun bear a triumphant whoop.

  They’ve noticed that the boy has burn scars all over his body, and as they meander along, Lah stares and stares at him, then finally blurts out, “Little uncle, why is your skin wrinkly like tree bark?” Unfazed, their guide says, addressing the grown-ups, as if all this time aware of their persistent but muted curiosity, “When I was little I got gasoline mixed up with cooking oil. When I poured the gasoline into the frying pan, flames leapt up and swallowed me whole!” A shadow darkens his face for a few seconds. Then, banishing it with a shake of his wild hair, he declares, “But I was only five then—now I’m nine!”

  They walk past a large enclosed muddy pit with what at first resembles a group of cement statues but on closer look turns out to be a cluster of live crocodiles lazing about in the muck. One has its jaws wide open. The boy informs them, “It’ll snap at whatever you toss its way—bananas, mangoes, monkeys.” He glances at Lah, and then, winking at Mr. Chum, pretends to whisper—in a voice loud enough for all to hear—“And little girls who ask too many questions!” Mr. Chum lets out an uproarious laugh, only to be promptly silenced by a look from Teera. Lah scurries away from the mud pit and attaches herself to Narunn.

  The two walk hand in hand for a while, one very tall and the other very small, and as they approach the reptile den, he lifts her up and perches her on his shoulders so that she can see inside—a clutch of pythons curled like giant painted pretzels, the near stillness of their breathing belying the strength of their grip.

  “Nineteen . . . seventy . . . eight,” the man murmurs aloud, saying each number slowly, as he scribbles the year across a paper on the stack in front of him. He puts down his pen, looks up, and asks, motioning to the tray atop his desk, “Would you like some tea?”

  Tun makes no reply, and his host pours some from the pot into the only cup. To Tun’s relief, the tea appears to be cool, not scalding hot as he feared. The man ponders the faintly brown liquid, takes a sip, and sets the cup down, nodding to his young colleagues, his directive barely perceptible. The boys escort Tun into a chair facing the man’s desk in the middle of the room. His head spins, his vision wavers, and Tun feels he might pitch forward, falling flat on his face onto the smeared tile floor, if not for the hands gripping his shoulders. Irrationally, he’s grateful to be sitting down—on a chair no less, and in a room with a writing desk, the very implement of education, reason. Maybe it’ll be different this time. His faint heartbeat rises.

  “How can we make this easier, less painful, for both of us?” his host murmurs from behind the desk, his head turning to the window that frames the expansive trunk of a tree. Tun wants to speak, tell the man how grateful he is, but his mouth will not open, his jaws throb in resistanc
e. He can only swallow, tasting the tea against his parched throat, his body’s thirst overwhelming. It’s not hunger that will kill you . . . His mind strays, and he wonders what else besides the giant tree exists beyond the small square window lined with iron bars. Earlier, he was blindfolded as they pushed him across the compound, and now inside the room, with the door shut, he is allowed to see again. Other rooms they’ve taken him to were stripped of furniture, and without windows. This one seems strangely civilized, ordinary. How can we make this easier, less painful, for both of us? Tun reins his thoughts back in, trying to make sense of the question, what more they want from him. He has told them everything, his entire biography. Exhausted the list of possible traitors and enemies he can name.

  “Nothing?” The host keeps his gaze fixed on the tree trunk. To Tun, the bark appears to be rippling, like the skin of a moving animal, a python perhaps. Or maybe they are armies of ants marching along the grooves. Again, his vision wavers, burns, and when he tries to blink, he sees the contour of the steel cable that eviscerated his face in the predawn hours. The ants circle his encumbered ankles, prickling his skin. How did they get in? He glimpses a trail stretching from the doorway to him. Blood. On the floor and walls. Everywhere. It assaults him, colors everything he sees, seeps into everything he tastes—his own saliva, the sweat on his lips, the air.

  His host turns from the window and begins to shuffle through the stack of papers on his desk, glancing at each page, the sweep of his hand sometimes brusque, sometimes drawn out. He appears angry—no, impatient, annoyed. But never angry. “Nothing,” the man repeats, even-tempered. “Absolutely nothing we can use.”

  Tun tries to remember this is someone who is fastidiously disciplined. Someone who in a former life taught literature, or maybe law, or the literature of law. In any case, a man of honed intelligence, not at all a barbarian.