The spiritual medium leads the group into the ceremony hall and everyone sits down on the straw mats, facing the monks, leaving a respectful aisle in between. Once again the chanting resumes, with Dr. Narunn leading in a baritone, the other monks joining him one by one in succession, their voices merging in layered resonance, like water upon water, a midnight monsoon descending on the Mekong, sonorous and pensive.
Makara appears soothed by the chanting, eyes closed and head lowered, palms together in front of his chest, body twitching every once in a while as if from the residual effect of the drug.
The Old Musician remembers himself during those adolescent years when politics was a kind of intoxicant for a generation heady with the country’s newly gained independence. He was only a few years older than Makara is now, but he felt like a man, making his own decisions about the future—where to go to school, what to study, which classmates to fraternize with, which teacher to steer clear of and which to endear himself to. It was 1956, less than three years after Cambodia had won its freedom from France. He was at Chomroeun Vichea, a private school in Phnom Penh, at a time when private schools were a relatively new phenomenon and thus considered inferior to the long-established government public institutions rooted in the French system, where, in order to move up from one level to the next, one must pass the notoriously difficult national examinations. While he had received high marks on all his exams, earning the coveted dipl?me, he’d nonetheless failed to secure a place in a public lycée, as there were a great many more qualified applicants than available seats, often given preferentially to those with wealth and family connections. Having neither money nor family influence, he’d entered Chomroeun Vichea with the help of a friend already at the school. Prama . . .
The Old Musician smiles, remembering his friend’s pet name. Cambodians are fond of nicknames and diminutives, as if every trait or idiosyncrasy deserves its own appellation, a distinct honor and title. Tun, his own nickname, came from his mother telling him as a young child that he was tunphlun—tenderhearted—and thus “tun” was a term of endearment for her son. It seems even back then the students and the teachers all had nicknames, demonstrating, as he would come to realize, a predilection for self-metamorphosis, the ease with which they would later assume one alias after another, to obscure some aspect of their identity as much as to accentuate another.
His friend was part of that growing circle of youth more interested in politics than academic pursuits. The year before, Prama had arrived at the school after he’d failed the state examinations, having abandoned his studies in favor of political meetings. Hearing of Tun’s travails, Prama was indignant on his behalf and told him there was still space at Chomroeun Vichea. Prama then convinced his father, a well-to-do silk merchant, to help his friend with the private school fees and tuition. Tun was extremely grateful and felt profoundly beholden to the generous but surly patriarch. Prama’s father made clear he expected great things from the studious young lute player, whose talents he’d enjoyed and patronized over the years at various family festivities and religious ceremonies. Tun greatly respected the merchant and feared the debt he would owe this man for the rest of his life. At the same time, he was reassured by the possibility that the patriarch must have truly thought well of him to put forth such investment in his future. A school was only as good as the paths it opened for its students, he reasoned.
Once at Chomroeun Vichea, to his surprise, he quite liked it, was even impressed by it, despite its reputation as a breeding ground for Communists and radicals. While at the time he was not politically active or even inclined, Tun found the atmosphere of open debate dynamic and refreshing, so unlike any school he had known. Soon he came to believe this private institution was indeed striving toward “progressive learning”—as the name Chomroeun Vichea clearly purported—the kind of education that went beyond memorization of standardized knowledge to incorporate a critique of social conditions and spur civic engagement. That particular year, 1956, his friend Prama, using Tun’s love of songwriting and Khmer poetry as bait, inveigled him into taking a literature class taught by a relatively new teacher who had quickly gained a reputation for being eloquent, insightful, and inspiring, as well as compassionate and fair in his dealings with students. It soon became clear to Tun that the teacher’s reputation was the sole reason Prama had wanted to take the class, given his friend’s absolute lack of interest in literature.
During class one morning, Prama, fidgeting with a trickster’s restlessness, obviously impatient with the writings of dead Frenchmen, raised his hand to interrupt the teacher’s reciting of a prose poem by Rimbaud from the collection titled Les Illuminations. “Why is it that we must mimic the tongue that reduced our people to savages?” Prama quipped, as usual teetering between humor and irreverence, pretending he’d completely forgotten this was a course on classic French literature.
Who else were they supposed to read and mimic? Tun wanted to remind his friend. From the seat behind, he snapped Prama’s shiny cowlick with a flick of his forefinger, hissing under his breath, “You’re going to get yourself expelled.” But others seemed to concur with Prama. Yes, why do we seek to master the language of our former masters?