That something as beautiful as a flower will also have served its purpose gives him comfort. His time too will surely come.
The Old Musician returns his gaze toward the nearest gate, then the one farther away. Nothing. Not a sound or silhouette. He feels his hope slipping away, its footfalls heavy upon his heart.
*
There’s an interlude, a hiatus of melodic shimmer. He can almost hear it, the sound of sunlight bouncing off the leaves and petals, hitting the soft earth, a medley of notes that recall the rosewood keys of a curved xylophone in a royal court ensemble. He lifts the banana leaves that shelter his supply of firewood and sets them aside. It is a week from Pchum Ben, the festival honoring the dead, and for the past several days, the rains have fallen almost continuously, as if the sky wishes also to remember these otherworldly exiles and itinerants, mourning them with renewed tears, so that between one burst and the next the ground never fully dries but appears steeped in shadows, undefined longings.
Next to the firewood, under a small plastic sheet, nestles an earthen brazier, shaped like a bottle gourd sliced lengthwise and hollowed out, with the bigger basin for the fire, and the smaller, shallower basin for excess cinders and ash. The Old Musician squats down, pulls the partially blackened brazier toward him, and, with a small bundle of twigs held together by dry vines, begins to loosen the moisture-laden ash that has settled like thick batter. If the rain keeps away, the ceremony to call Makara’s spirit back to his body will take place today at sunset as scheduled, and by then hopefully the ground will have mostly dried for the procession around the temple.
The Old Musician closes his eyes as he works his twig whisk. Life hums and whirs around him. He’s learned to take in his surroundings within the first few moments, as one might learn to discern the form and mood of a song by hearing the first phrase of notes. Considering the blows his head received during those months at Slak Daek, it’s a wonder he can still hear. And at the moment he hears everything. Right beside him, an orchestra of insects buzzes in their chamber beneath the firewood. Some forty meters away, the Mekong rushes in full spate. Hidden in the roof of some nearby structure, a gecko rasps, Tikkaer! Tikkaer!
A thunderclap rumbles in the north, in the direction of the city. At the far corner of the temple compound the air whistles. A rush of leaves falling from a great height. Something crashes to the ground with a resounding thud, as if following the command of the thunder. A desiccated palm frond, the Old Musician surmises. Not far from him, two adolescent monks on the steps of their kot—the wooden cottage on stilts—recite by rote their English lessons, chanting as they would the Buddhist dharma. My name is Mr. Brown. What is your name? My name is Mr. Smit . . . In their saffron robes, with their arms and shoulders bare, the interplay of cloth and skin, they remind the Old Musician of a pair of orange-spotted geckos he once glimpsed under the front eave of his cottage. He half expects them to chime, Tikkaer! Instead, they reel off back and forth, How do you do? I’m fine, sankyou.
Sankyou. He can’t help but smile. For most Cambodians, the th is difficult to articulate. Likewise, Smit could well be a Khmer name, easily pronounceable, but not Smith. Most people looking at him—an impoverished old musician, disfigured and half-blind—never guess he once spoke this language with great fluency. He wonders whether the saffron-robed Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown will accept his help if offered. Or will they regard him with skepticism, as the young often regard the old? He doesn’t blame them, youth with their doubt and distrust. They’ve inherited a harsh world, and there is much to question. He for one is suspect.
Where do you live? My how is near de market. My how is near de river. House, he wants to correct. The market, the river.
In Democratic Kampuchea, he forced himself to forget most of the English he’d learned in his youth. But now, with it used everywhere, he remembers more and more each day, with a speed and ease he didn’t think possible. Quite often a word or phrase will skim the surface of his mind, like a stone skipping the stillness of a pond, rippling his memory.
He recalls an English word he learned during his brief sojourn in America in the fall of 1961 when he was a university student. Heartstrings. The woman he loved taught it to him. “It could be the perfect English name for the sadiev,” she said, placing her head on his bare chest as they lay on the narrow bed in his dormitory apartment. “Except the lute has only one string—singular.” She was his English tutor, and in class, he had been eager to demonstrate his ability to hear the s at the end of a word, which the other Cambodian students in his group found difficult to catch. To him, this barely audible sibilance, more like a sigh than a hiss, denoted not only the plural form but also the plurality of thoughts and ideas, the reverberation of the multitudes. Lying in his arms, she told him what the word meant and how it would be used in a sentence. “You are my heartstrings,” he said, pulling her even tighter to him, certain of what love meant.
They had met only weeks earlier. At a time when women wore their hair in short, stiff bouffants, she had long, soft curls that had unraveled from a loose knot and spilled down the length of her back as she rushed into the classroom. A creature born of the wind, was his first thought. He felt certain if he so much as breathed on those midnight tendrils, she’d upheave and take flight, hair spreading like a cape behind her. She was wildly beautiful.
“In English, it doesn’t matter if you’re the students and I’m the teacher,” she’d said by way of introduction, “it is you for everyone. There’s no hierarchy, no need to address me as Neak Gru—‘Respected Teacher’—or any other such title we Cambodians are so fond of. We’re all here to learn, to expand our understanding of ourselves through another language, another rhythm of thought and feeling. Call me Channara!”