Tun would come to learn these details bit by bit, from the child herself and others like her who had barely escaped the bombing and were brought to the hospital in Phnom Penh. She was so small he’d missed her entirely when he’d first walked into Calmette, where she was lost in the gauzes of misery that had unraveled from the waiting room into the anemically lit corridor.
The hospital was short of staff; thus Tun and Prama—his friend was still alive then in ’69—and others from their political group had come to volunteer. With no medical knowledge or skills to offer, their task was mainly to escort the wounded—those who could still walk—to the correct treatment room. They were told from the start that some of the smaller children did not understand they’d lost their homes and families, and therefore great care should be taken when communicating with these little ones. Arrangements were being made for temporary shelters in the city where the children would remain until permanent guardians could be found. Perhaps distant relatives somewhere would eventually emerge to claim the orphans. In the meantime, boys would be placed in a temple, but girls would have to be relegated to an orphanage. Ignored and forgotten by all, a life there, everyone knew, would be a life in perpetual limbo, with no possibility of a future.
As Tun came into the corridor to help the next patient to treatment, he spotted her among the wounded and shell-shocked. A face so small and perfectly round, the first thought that popped to mind was “pea pod.” Indeed, she appeared to him like a tiny seed, a life whole and self-contained, needing only love and care to bud. And yet here she was, lost in this cramped tunnel of blood-soaked bandages and last breaths.
Feeling his gaze, she looked up, her eyes lit with such fierce hope it was akin to recognition, like the mirror reflection of an encounter the previous month that had arrested him as profoundly.
*
Their reunion took place on the street in front of La Salle de Conférence Chaktomuk, the new performance hall from which he’d emerged after a long morning of grueling rehearsal in preparation for that evening’s opening-night performance of Tum Tiev. He was among the lead musicians, and the main lyricist, for a stage adaptation of the revered classic of thwarted young love. Tun stepped into the afternoon glare, his vision assaulted by the sudden brightness, his temples still throbbing from the thick clouds of incense and candles burning with the baisei tvay kru—offerings made to the guardians of Music and Art—that accompanied every rehearsal. He needed fresh air. Behind the conference hall, the river water susurrated, wooing him, and he wished for nothing more than to plunge into its depths and be borne away by its liquid melody.
On the sidewalk in front of him, vendors paraded hand-painted kites, sparrows chirping in tiny bamboo cages, snacks wrapped in banana leaves. A crowd had gathered around a cart selling fresh sugarcane juice, like bees inebriated by the mist sugaring the air. Two cones for us, please! one called out above the collective drone, and another, Three over here! The vendor acknowledged the orders as he fed two or three cut stalks at a time into the hand-cranked extractor, each stalk wrapped with a twirl of citrus rind—the famed virescent Pusat orange. Tun’s nostrils smarted at the thick, sweet scent. He was suddenly aware of his parched throat. So instead of veering right toward the river, he swung left into the crowd, much too forcefully, nearly knocking a little girl, who looked up startled, the banana-leaf cone full of juice wobbling in her hand. Before he could apologize, the girl’s mother turned, and his heart stopped.
“Oh!” exclaimed Channara.
Failing to find the proper greeting, he stammered breathlessly, stupidly, the wind knocked out of him, “It’s you.”
“Yes.”
Eternity stood between them, and neither knew what else to say. Then finally, Channara spoke again. “This is Suteera, our”—she faltered, then, steadying herself, proceeded—“my daughter. Suteera, darling, say hello to Uncle Tun. Il est un vieux ami de Maman.”
The little one did not speak but, palms together and bowing slightly, offered him an elegant sampeah. He didn’t expect such grace from someone so small. She’s much too young to be mine—the thought insinuated itself. He chased it away. Our, Channara had started to say. She must’ve not wanted to bring her husband into the conversation. He was touched by this attempt to protect him from her life, from the happiness he could not share. Had Suteera been his child, she would’ve been eight or nine now. Still, in this little girl, he glimpsed what might have been.
“Suteera is three,” Channara said, and, smiling at her daughter, teased, “and terribly shy.”
“Three!” Tun exclaimed, feigning lightness. The girl was born in 1966, he quickly calculated, four years after Channara married, a long time for a married Khmer woman to be without child. He could well imagine the pressure she must’ve endured from her family, particularly her imperious father, Le Conseiller. But knowing Channara’s character, her fierce desire for independence, he guessed she didn’t want to be tied down right away.
The last he’d seen her was on her wedding day in December 1962, a year after his return from America. He’d come to her family estate as part of the plengkar ensemble hired to play at the wedding. Somehow he’d found the courage to step into her bedroom, the sanctity of her solitude, the final moments of her singlehood before she would share her bed with a man other than himself. You broke my heart, she’d said. And you my soul, he replied, standing at arm’s length, unable to move closer, to embrace her as he would’ve liked, paralyzed by his own anguish. So we’re even now, she murmured. Never, he shot back. It was their last exchange, and he regretted each syllable as he spoke it, as it emerged forcefully of its own will from his lips. He hadn’t been able to forgive himself since.
As he stood facing her again on the sidewalk in front of Chaktomuk, he thought perhaps this unexpected collision was an opportunity to rectify their terse parting. He had to find his way into her graces again, if not her heart. Perhaps he could win her daughter’s affection. “My, you’re so tall for your age!” He winced at the falsetto of his flattery but couldn’t stop himself. “Such a young lady already!”
Suteera stared at him, unblinking. He shifted uncomfortably.
Everything about the child was a replica of the mother, only in much tinier utterances. The long, slender limbs that seemed to accentuate an inborn aloofness, already so apparent even at this tender age. Eyes veiled in an abundance of lashes that gave the impression of bottomless pools rimmed with ferns. Hair that borrowed the intonation of the sea, rising and falling in continuous waves. He could not believe what he was seeing. A double epiphany. The way they stood there holding hands, while he hovered just outside their sphere of intimacy, pierced him with such magnificent agony he believed he would never heal from it. Pain, he would come to learn, has its own afterlife.
He suffers it even now.