“Lokta, Lokta!” The Old Musician turns toward the voice and sees Dara wading hurriedly through chest-deep water, his raised hand clasping something dark and stiff.
A catfish, he thinks, noting its bent shape. Strangely, its stillness worries him. Then as Dara nears, he sees it’s not a fish at all. Fear climbs up his spine and his first impulse is to jump into the river and seize the gun from the youngster. Throw it away! he wants to yell out to the boy but thinks better of it. If loaded, it could fire. Dara, knowing full well the danger of his discovery, places the revolver carefully on the steps. Sok, orphaned by guns, has gone completely mute, and the Old Musician can only imagine what’s running through the youngster’s mind—Who has this gun wounded or murdered? Noting its newness and shine, the Old Musician suspects the revolver recently found its way into the river. Certainly it doesn’t look like it’s been lost for years in the sand and silt of the Mekong.
He wipes his hands on his shirt several times before lifting it. Pointing the gun away from himself and the boys, he pulls out the chamber, careful not to touch the trigger. Never point your weapon at anyone you’re not ready to kill, the commander at his training base seethed in the denseness of the jungle. He shakes away the memory and refocuses his attention on the weapon at hand. No bullets. Relief washes over him. He should’ve guessed. Even a single bullet can be easily sold on the black market for quick cash, with the added advantage that, unlike a gun, one doesn’t have to fear being caught with it. I found the bullet on the street, a child like Dara or Sok could say to a dealer in one of the dingy alleyways off rue Confédération de la Russie, where a whole string of stalls trade in such implements of death, under the front of selling imitation US military uniforms and memorabilia.
The Old Musician recalls the abundance of weapons, the seemingly inexhaustible supplies suddenly available to the revolutionary armed forces when they took over the country that April in 1975, combining their own arsenal with that of the Lon Nol government, which had received nearly two billion dollars in military aid from the United States in those final years of the civil war. During the subsequent forced exodus, and throughout the revolutionary regime, .38 revolvers similar to the one he’s holding now, along with AK47s and M16s, were copiously dispensed like toys to the young, most of whom, uneducated and illiterate, had no understanding of any doctrine or cause they were fighting for but nevertheless felt the thrill and power these weapons gave them. Now an AR15, cherished like a family heirloom, might be pawned by a former revolutionary soldier to pay for the funeral of his little daughter who died of malaria, and an unearthed grenade, sold and bought and sold again for a couple of dollars, is finally thrown by a farmer to be rid of a neighbor vying for a tiny strip of farmland bordering their two properties. A young mother employed as a deminer routinely replants land mines she’s extracted, fearing that if all the mines were removed she would have no work to provide for her young ones, even with the knowledge that a Bouncing Betty has already made her a widow and that a silent killer left in the ground can remain active for decades.
The Old Musician has met them all, these fragmented souls, at once helpless and hazardous, each both a victim of their circumstances and a weapon by the choices they make. All it takes is a single tripped wire—fear, anger, desperation—for them to detonate and cause irreparable harm.
“What should we do, Lokta?” Dara asks, while Sok continues to stare in muted horror.
“We take it to the abbot,” he attempts to reassure the boys. “His Venerable will know what to do.”
As they climb the stairs, what seizes the Old Musician’s throat is not the discovery of a gun by two youngsters in their naked innocence but the ordinariness of weapons today as a currency for food in the cycle of poverty and violence.
He sees his culpability in everything.
“So that’s how those footprints led me here, to this room.” Narunn lifts Teera’s chin so that he looks right into her eyes as he cradles her. “To this moment with you. Sometimes a couple’s lost love is requited in the union of another pair, years or decades or a lifetime later. You called, I came, and since then I’ve waited for you.”
Teera swallows. “Where were they . . . the hands?”
Narunn sits up, pulling her forward, and turns so that he holds her, cupping her from the back as they both face the closed window above the bed. Then, lacing his fingers into hers, he leans to place their hands on the wall.
“Here.”
At the open-air ceremony hall, a throng quickly gathers around the Old Musician, the gun in the middle on the straw mat, wielding a hypnotic power, drawing every gaze to it. “Where did it come from?” one of the monks asks amidst the multitude of shorn heads and saffron robes. “I found it in the river!” Dara gloats, pride having replaced fear. Where in the river? How did it get there? Whose? Can it shoot? Does it have bullets? I think it belonged to a corrupt policeman. Questions and opinions erupt. No, that’s the kind I’ve seen bodyguards carry. It must be expensive . . .
The Venerable Kong Oul appears and everyone promptly quiets down. “Such intense curiosity is better applied toward your studies,” says the abbot, lowering himself onto the straw mat opposite the Old Musician. He looks around, smiling, as if this were just another gathering. “Back to your quarters, disciples.”
The throng issues a collective moan. But recognizing an order, however gently expressed, they begin to disperse. Except one novice who remains rooted to the spot. Makara. His parents have recently forced his ordination to keep him out of trouble. “How much is it worth?” he asks bluntly.
“Oh, I wouldn’t know.” The abbot seems unperturbed by the youth’s behavior. “It’s not something you ought to concern yourself with.”
“Probably at least fifty dollars,” Makara insists, and the Old Musician can’t tell whether the glint in his eyes is greed, inspired by the thought of such a large sum, or the effect of substance withdrawal.
After the ceremony to call his spirit back had failed, Makara’s parents took him to a local rehabilitation center, where the method of treatment was literally to beat the drug out of the boy. Makara lasted a week there. Against his father’s angry warning—The boy will not change if we don’t let him suffer!—Makara’s mother brought him home, devastated by the injuries and bruises covering their son’s body. The boy swore he would give up drugs, but in no time at all he was caught stealing what little jewelry his mother had and pawning it to feed his habit. The distraught parents pleaded with the abbot to take their son in.