She pauses on the narrow footpath leading directly to the cottage. She wants to turn back, to run away again, feeling ridiculous and small-minded in her quest. What is it that she hopes to reclaim? Hasn’t her life, all she’s been able to rebuild in America, made up for what was lost and destroyed? What more could she demand when others have so little, almost nothing to live on?
“Hello, sir!” a voice suddenly calls out, and she turns toward it. A young monk pokes his head from beneath a saffron robe hanging on a line between two bowed hibiscus saplings. Teera looks left and right only to realize that the “sir” was directed at her. She hesitates, unsure what language to respond with, but finally in English reciprocates, “Oh, hello there!—Sir,” she adds, almost an afterthought.
This pleases her greeter immensely. He offers her a wide grin, made more comical by his shaven head and big elfish ears. He turns to another shadow beside him, the tethered saplings bowing even deeper from the tugs and pulls of the laundered robe, and suddenly another young novice pops up, exclaiming, “How are you I’m fine sankyou sir!” The two giggle, covering their mouths with their hands, clearly delighted that they get to experiment on a complete stranger. “I’m fine sankyou sir!” the first echoes, and again they both giggle.
Everywhere she goes, Teera witnesses this—the easy laughter, the abundant lightness. When she gives the proper greetings for monks, they promptly duck back into hiding, so now she sees only their silhouettes behind the transparent glow of the saffron robe, like two characters in a shadow-puppet play. “Khmer Amerikan!” they exclaim in hushed excitement. “Khmer Anaekajun!” She’s heard this repeatedly since her arrival, a term that seems to convey, One of us . . . but not quite. Teera couldn’t have imagined that in her own country, where everyone looks like her, she’d be labeled again and again an outsider. It unsettles her.
Suddenly she is standing in front of the cottage. Her heart thumps, and she feels the odd sensation of being a child again, loitering in front of her father’s music room, straining to hear if he was practicing behind the closed door. How did she get there? How has she come here?
Again, Teera is struck by the collapsibility of time and space, the melding of worlds and selves, and before she can work out how to announce her arrival—whether to call out a greeting or rap on the frame, as there’s no door to speak of—the burlap curtain on the doorway parts.
He stands before her. A shadow mangled and maimed, a patch over one eye, a scar across his face. The contour of a rivulet drawn by tears. I know not how love chooses who and why— Why I see infinity in your eyes . . .
She catches her breath, stunned, suddenly remembering. I dream of an alternate existence, a world parallel to this for you and me . . . where birth’s not a moment but eternity.
Finding her voice, she struggles. “I—” The large sun hat held to her chest trembles. “I am . . .”
“Suteera,” he murmurs. “Yes, I know.”
There’s no place even to invite her to sit, not a single piece of furniture besides the bamboo bed. Even if there were, even if he could afford something, arrange somehow for it to be brought to him, where would he put it? The cottage perhaps has room in one corner for a small bamboo chair and table, the collapsible kind sold on street corners and sidewalks. But a chair alone, he recalls from his time wandering among the city’s homeless, costs at least ten American dollars, more than he’s had in years. There wasn’t much he could’ve arranged beforehand to prepare for this visit. He can barely arrange himself, the placement of his heart, in these past hours since the Venerable Kong Oul came to offer him the news. I’ve just got off the telephone! the old monk relayed excitedly, abandoning his usual pious calm. The gods have granted you the reunion you’ve so longed for! The Old Musician’s immediate unthinking response was, You were on the phone with the gods? The abbot let out a riotous laugh. No, my friend, Miss Suteera! She’s in Cambodia—in Phnom Penh! His heart stopped then, for how long, he’s not sure, but when he became aware of it again, it was pounding inside his chest. She came. She’s here, in this same city. Now she’s inside his cottage. Right in front of him. Not a dream but a vision nonetheless.
For the first interminable seconds, he shuffles about in the tight half-lit space, picking one thing up and setting another down. He’d like to offer her tea, but he has only a single chipped cup, the same one he himself drinks out of every day, the inside stained dark brown, its surface spidered with cracks. Perhaps Dr. Narunn will come by and he can then oblige his young friend to aid in the hosting. But, he remembers, the physician is leaving today—might’ve already left. He chastises himself, You old fool. He should’ve had the foresight to borrow a cup and saucer from the temple. Or at least a clean glass to offer her the cool rainwater from his cistern. It’s especially sweet and refreshing after the sustained downpours of the past months.
He pauses, backtracks, and scoffs, Rainwater?—Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll get her sick. He stands ramrod in his spot, wondering if she can hear him, if inadvertently he’s spoken aloud. He feels her gaze piercing him, traveling the length of his scar, resting on the black eye patch Dr. Narunn has given him, as if trying to see past it. He dares not meet her eyes, look into those dark, lash-laden depths. “May I offer you something to drink?” The words fly from his mouth in perfect-pitched American English, surprising them both. They are still for a moment. Then she looks away. He is mortified by what he’s uttered—the language, the lavish offer, the carelessness of his tongue. As if he could give whatever she desires! Old fool.
“Thank you,” she says finally, in English no less, her voice guileless, thinking nothing of his momentary confusion with time and space. “But I don’t need anything.” Returning her gaze to him, she switches back to Khmer. “I—I’ve come to see you.” She smiles, the sun hat still pressed against her chest, as if hiding something fragile.
His heart tears, bleeding inside. Has he misheard the emphasis, the empathy in her voice? He mustn’t allow himself to believe she regards him any way other than with suspicion.
“May I sit?” She gestures to the foot of the bamboo bed.
He stands shaken for a second, then mumbles apologetically, “Yes, of course,” and makes as if to clear away the instruments he’s neatly arranged to await her arrival.