Music of the Ghosts
Vaddey Ratner
To the lives, and the beauty, that inspired these pages
Prelude
Suteera wakes amidst the high grass to a tremor several meters away. She is confused for the first few seconds, thinking it music, the quiver of a plucked string. One of those ancient-looking instruments her father used to play for her when she was very little, a lullaby to help her sleep. She’s forgotten its name. She’s forgotten many things—the taste of real food, her father’s voice, who she was before her mother and brother died, before hunger and fear.
The tremor continues. She stills herself to listen. It seems to be coming from the next field, but she can’t see past the rise of dirt in front of her. She shouldn’t be scared, she tells herself. Her aunt is sleeping beside her on the hard earth, cushioned by a layer of patted-down grass, and all around, dispersed among stalks and blades, the other members of their group are lost in dreams. It is twilight, the sky a muted gold. Soon, when it’s completely dark, they will wake and continue their headlong flight out of Cambodia toward the border with Thailand. But despite the distance they’ve covered, Suteera can’t shake the feeling of being pursued. Haunted.
It wasn’t long ago that Khmer Rouge soldiers, retreating from a battle lost to the invading Vietnamese troops, had forced their entire village into the jungle. Halfway through the journey, her grandparents, lacking the strength to go on, urged Suteera and their youngest daughter, Amara, to continue without them. Her aunt promised to return as soon as they found help, though they all knew this wasn’t possible, could never be. Days or maybe weeks later, they emerged from the dense jungle and found themselves in the middle of rice fields spiked with the dry cut stalks of crops long harvested. The sun was setting fast, a big shimmering globe straddling the horizon, tinting the sky and earth with its fiery hue. It must have just rained—an out-of-season shower, Suteera thought—because in the far distance there appeared the faint arc of a rainbow. Suteera weaved her steps around the bodies of a family, their possessions scattered haphazardly, among which was a ripped pillow overflowing with gold and precious jewels. The soldiers said they could take what they wanted. But the villagers shook their heads and scurried past the corpses.
Frightened, Suteera grabbed the arm of a young soldier walking beside her. He let her cling to him and murmured that she should stick close to the bodies, step over them if she could, because this was the safest path. These people were shot, he told her, pointing out how the bodies were completely intact, no limbs blown off, each one whole. He whistled a lullaby to soothe her—or maybe to keep himself calm—and softened his footsteps. They’d decided to cut across the rice fields instead of taking the wide, open road some distance away, because roads like those were more likely to be planted with mines and explosives. Suteera looked over her shoulder and saw Amara furtively bending down to pick up something. Don’t, she wanted to tell her aunt. Don’t steal from the dead. But too late. A flash of gold necklace dangled from Amara’s clenched fist as she quickly slipped it into her shirt pocket. Suteera faced front again, holding tighter to the soldier’s hand, eyes on the distant rainbow. They crossed one field into the next, following the trail of more bodies, more families, more gold. Suddenly they heard faint music in the woods ahead. Some kind of string instrument. A lute perhaps, said someone, one of the older gentlemen who still remembered such sounds. There must’ve been a hut nearby, a farmer and his family, tenders of these fields. Everyone was certain of it. Those in front quickened their steps. Then, without warning, the fields lifted in explosion. Earth and flesh shattered. Blood sprayed the dried yellow stalks.
Now there’s only Suteera, and her young aunt, and the few who were far enough away when the mines exploded. The rest were killed. Who, or what, had made that sound? Was it a person, some kind of forest spirit, the rustle of bamboo leaves, the vibration of cicadas? Their joint hallucination? They’ll never know.
Suteera listens again for the sound that woke her. Maybe she’s imagined it. Another hallucination, she thinks. Beside her, Amara curls in the grass, her breathing calmed by sleep. Like this, with her eyes closed and her face in repose, Amara looks like a child herself, not someone left with the responsibility of caring for another. As far as they know, they are the only ones in the family to have survived. They have no idea what happened to her father, if he lived or died. He’d disappeared long ago, the first to vanish. Suteera knows she and Amara are lucky to have each other. Most of the others in the group are alone, their loved ones murdered or lost to hunger, disease. Maybe this is why they’ve all decided to take their chances crossing the border. There’s nothing, no one, to tie them to their homeland. There is no more home, only this land of open graves.
Her aunt takes a deep breath, turns the other way, continues sleeping, one arm swung over their scant belongings as if to guard against field rats that might try to invade the rice pot with the gold necklace inside. When Amara dropped the necklace into the pot while the rice was bubbling away, she explained that this would keep it safe from bandits and border guards. The thieves would never think to look inside a lump of rice no bigger than Suteera’s bony fist. Her aunt had been careful to make the lump look natural, eating around it, spooning it out in a seemingly abandoned way, leaving uneven edges. The necklace would keep them alive, she told Suteera. They could trade it for food and shelter once across the border. The ghosts won’t leave us alone, Suteera thought. They’ll follow us wherever we go.