The danger, Teera realizes, is not in remembering but in longing for what never was, leaping into vague possibilities that multiply into even more obscure possibilities. In reality, her grandfather, an ardent patriot and staunch monarchist, would never abandon his country for another. If anything, he was the kind who would return in times of upheaval to try to help steer the country back to stability, and, according to Amara, that was exactly what he had done.
Knowing what she knows now, Teera is convinced that even back then, in the early sixties, with student demonstrations and leftist politics on the rise and the underground movement gaining membership and momentum, her politically astute grandfather must’ve discerned the fault lines, the rifts and ruptures around his tightly cordoned enclave of privilege and power. He must’ve known her mother’s role in augmenting those rifts, her infatuation with the left, and he must’ve used all his weight and influence to try to keep his country from sliding toward the abyss.
Précipice. Teera loved the sound of it as a child, without knowing what it meant. It wasn’t the kind of word one learned in primary school—even at the elite école Miche—but through her grandfather’s refrain, his lament, it became firmly rooted in her memory. A lifetime later and in an entirely new geography, she encountered its English equivalent in her high school AP Literature class, and only then did she realize her grandfather had been speaking for all of them, for all Cambodia, a nation on the brink of its own destruction, its willful suicide.
The temple officiant lights the candle on a popil, a carved wooden holder shaped like a banyan leaf, and gestures for the Rattanaks and their boy to scoot forward. A group of elders, representing the eight cardinal directions, encircles Makara. They pass the lit candle around in a clockwise direction, each drawing a half-moon over the flame before offering it to the next person, weaving a symbolic wreath of protection around the boy. Last in the circle, the spiritual medium receives the candle in one hand, opens the lid of the clay vessel with the other, and blows out the flame in one decisive breath, sending the strand of smoke dancing in Makara’s face. When the smoke enters his nostrils, Makara lets out a series of coughs, as if to suggest that indeed his spirit has united with his body. The jolt sends a sprig of cowlick straight up at the back of his head.
The Old Musician smiles, remembering Prama’s cowlick, the spiky hair his friend was forever trying to tame with coconut oil, the prickly strands that earned him the pet name Kamprama—“Porcupine”—a playful spin-off on his grandiose formal name, Pramaborisoth, one of “True and Pure Knowledge.”
He last saw his friend alive that misty morning, in 1971, when he—then Tun—waited with his daughter outside their Citro?n on Sisowath Quay along the river. By then Prama had joined the Communist Party and was preparing to go into hiding. His friend wanted to meet at the promenade in front of the Royal Palace, an open and public place, which would give the illusion of a serendipitous encounter between two old friends, so as not to stir any suspicion from patrolling police. It was normal for people to park their cars on the streets and then go for a jog or stroll on the promenade along the Tonle Sap River.
Tun himself had come in running shorts, though it was a nippy morning. To keep himself warm while he waited for this so-called chance meeting with Prama, Tun stretched and sprinted back and forth between a pair of coconut trees. On the curb, his daughter stood with her back to him, drawing pictures on the car window, observing his opaque reflection through the fogged pane. Earlier at home, she had woken to the sound of his footsteps walking past her room and then, trailing him through the hallway, insisted on accompanying him.
Now, worried she’d get sick from the mist falling on her head and the chilly breeze from the river, Tun suggested she go back inside the Citro?n. She refused, telling him that the fine spray was tik phka chouk—the shower falling from the lotus-shaped faucet they had at home, under which she’d lose herself every morning, singing his funerary smoat to herself, happy as a sparrow trilling in its birdbath, oblivious to the mournfulness her invocation inspired.
The Old Musician swallows, pushing down the grief rising to his throat at this last image—the happy innocence with which she embraced the world—and he wants to weep but cannot.
The monks have reached the final incantation, pausing to allow the group to repeat each line after them. Dr. Narunn dips the sacred brush made from a bundle of finely pared coconut spines into the bronze bowl and sprinkles water on the throng before him. The drops make the Old Musician think of the tiny beads gathering on his daughter’s long locks that morning, like strands of infinitesimal pearls materializing and melting in rapid succession.
He closes his eyes, remembering the mossy dampness of her hair when he placed his hand on her head. He’d caught sight of Prama at the far end of the promenade. He ordered her to wait inside the car. She reluctantly obeyed, noting his hardened voice, which he almost never used with her. In subtle protest, she sat in the back instead of reclaiming the passenger seat where she’d always sit with him, as if to say, If you don’t want me near you, then I won’t sit next to you! He gave her a rueful smile. She did not smile back.
Prama appeared on a rickety old bicycle, less a symbol of his fallen economic status as the disinherited heir of a silk fortune than a statement of his identification with the laboring masses. The two friends mimed surprise at running into each other. Here of all places! How are you doing? Where do you live now? Well, let me give you my address! Prama pulled from his breast pocket a pen and folded paper, pretended to scribble down his address, and handed Tun the paper, which in reality was a letter to his father, from whom he was now estranged. The silk merchant had disowned Prama due to his associations with those “loathed Communists.” But Prama, ever boyishly affable and good-natured in spite of his serious political agenda, never begrudged his father for cutting him off. That morning, preparing to join the insurgency, he told Tun he wanted his father to understand his decision, his chosen path, a course he believed the entire country would one day be forced to take. This was the dawn of a bright new decade, his friend told him, sounding a bit naive, Tun thought. Prama, having taken another nickname, an alias he refused to reveal, parted by saying that he hoped Tun would reconsider following him.