Soon all three were asleep. Grandmother Queen’s fan stopped waving, Milk Mother’s hand rested on my back, and Radana’s right leg hung out of the hammock, fat and still, like a bamboo shoot, the bells on her anklet soundless.
Mama appeared in the courtyard, having returned from her trip to the temple, which took longer than she’d planned. Quietly, so as not to wake us, she climbed the few short steps to the dining pavilion and sat down next to Papa, resting her arm on his thigh. Papa put down his notebook and turned to her. “She didn’t mean it, you know. It was an innocent question.”
He was talking about me. I lowered my eyelids, just enough to make them believe I was asleep.
Papa continued, “Les Khmers Rouges, Communists, Marxists . . . Whatever we adults call them, they’re just words, funny sounds to a child, that’s all. She doesn’t know who they are or what these words mean.”
I tried repeating the names in my head—Les Khmers Rouges . . . Communists . . . They sounded so fancy and elliptical, like the names of mythical characters in the tales of the Reamker I never tired of reading, the devarajas, who were descendants of the gods, or the demon rakshasas, who fought them and fed on fat children.
“Once you shared their aspirations,” Mama said, head resting on Papa’s shoulder. “Once you believed in them.”
I wondered what kind of race they were.
“No, not them. Not the men, but the ideals. Decency, justice, integrity . . . I believed in these and always will. Not only for myself but for our children. All this”—he looked around the courtyard—“will come and go, Aana. Privileges, wealth, our titles and names are transient. But these ideals are timeless, the core of our humanity. I want our girls to grow up in a world that allows them, if nothing else, these. A world without such ideals is madness.”
“What about this madness?”
“I hoped so much it wouldn’t come to this.” He sighed and went on. “Others abandoned us long ago at the first sign of trouble. And now so have the Americans. Alas, democracy is defeated. And our friends will not stay for its execution. They left while it was still possible, and who could blame them?”
“What about us?” Mama asked. “What will happen to our family?”
Papa was silent. Then, after what seemed like a long time, he said, “It’s extremely difficult at this juncture, but I can still arrange to send you and the family to France.”
“Me and the family? What about you?”
“I will stay. As bad as it looks, there’s still hope.”
“I will not leave without you.”
He looked at her, then, leaning over, kissed the nape of her neck, his lips lingering for a moment, drinking her skin. One by one he began to remove the flowers from her hair, loosening it and letting it spread across her shoulders. I held my breath, trying to make myself invisible. Without saying more, they stood up, walked toward the front stairway, climbed the newly polished steps, and disappeared into the house.
I looked around the teak settee. Everyone was still asleep. I heard droning in the distance. The drone grew louder, until it became deafening. My heart pounded, and my ears throbbed. I looked up, squinting past the red tile roof of the master house, past the top of the banyan tree, past a row of tall skinny palms lining the front gate. Then I saw it! Way up in the sky, like a large black dragonfly, its blade slicing the air, tuktuktuktuktuk . . .
The helicopter started to descend, drowning out all other sounds. I stood up on the teak settee to better see it. All of a sudden it swooped back up and went the other way. I stretched my neck, trying to see past the gate. But it was gone. Zrup! Vanished completely, as if it had only been a thought, an imagined dot in the sky.
Then—
PCHKOOO!!! PCHKOOO!!! PCHKOOO!!!
The ground shook under me.
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In the Shadow of the Banyan
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About the Author
© KRISTINA SHERK
Vaddey Ratner, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, is the author of the New York Times bestseller In the Shadow of the Banyan. Her critically acclaimed debut novel was a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and has been translated into seventeen languages. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Cornell University, where she specialized in Southeast Asian history and literature.
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Touchstone
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Vaddey Ratner
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Touchstone hardcover edition April 2017
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Interior design by Jill Putorti
Jacket design by Christopher Lin
Background © David & Myrtille/Arcangel, Temple © Diego Calvi/Dreamstime.com, Woman © Sutipotn Somnam/Moment/Getty Images
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ratner, Vaddey, author.
Title: Music of the ghosts / Vaddey Ratner.
Description: First Touchstone hardcover edition. | New York, NY : Touchstone, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016026793 (print) | LCCN 2016033313 (ebook) | ISBN 9781476795782 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781476795799 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781476795805 (eBook)|
Subjects: LCSH: Cambodia—History—20th century—Fiction. | Refugees—Cambodia— Fiction. | GSAFD: Autobiographical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3618.A876 M87 2017 (print) | LCC PS3618.A876 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23.
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016026793.
ISBN 978-1-4767-9578-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-9580-5 (ebook)
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