On they go, exchanging silent greetings with those they meet. A nod, a smile, a gesture of recognition. A deep bow to a row of monks receiving alms on a phoenix-shaped vessel near the steps of a temple of white-and-gold pillars. The monks do not stir from their contemplation, do not look up, do not chant or speak to the villagers giving alms from their boats. Speech is an incursion. Only the oars are loquacious, their rhythmic whisper and whoosh permissible, a welcome sutra in this birthing light.
It is their last morning here, and Narunn is determined to take them all the way to the end of the mile-long stretch through the flooded forest, where the Tonle Sap Lake awaits. His previous attempts had been unsuccessful, their trip prolonged by countless things to see, drawn-out greetings, more old friends to reacquaint with. But starting out early like this, they should be able to make it there without too much disruption and turn back before the sun gets too hot. Lah scoots from the seat to the bottom of the dugout, where she can safely delight in the water. She drapes her arm over the hull and lets her fingers skim the surface, creating rills and rifts that mimic the patterns of the oars. Narunn whistles toward a group of fishermen with their nets and traps extending into the inundated mangroves. Recognizing the birdlike call, they whistle back, a tune all the more haunting amidst the drowning trees.
A narrow winding path weaves ahead through an archipelago of water hyacinth. To the left, a thatched hut rocks gently in the breeze, surrounded by rafts of spices drying in the sun, and amidst the bold profusion of colors, three naked siblings stand in a line from tallest to shortest, a live fat snake wound around their shoulders like a ropy scarf, a shared comfort blanket, all twisted and tensile. Nearby on a raft with buckets and bowls and scattered bars of soap, their mother is washing their baby brother, dunking him right into the river, while the three children await their turns, faces still full of sleep. They exchange long, silent stares with Lah. To the right in a clearing, a man balances on a bamboo coracle, jabbing the water with his spear.
As they glide farther now, without others in sight, Teera follows the rhythm of the oars breaking the water, and her thoughts turn to the quiet of another narrow winding path they traveled just a few days before . . . a footpath under giant strangling fig trees, leading from an ancient ruin, the last of the Angkor temples they’d seen that day. They were tired and wanted to find a quiet place to rest before catching their tuk-tuk back to the hotel. Halfway along the footpath, Teera heard the sound of a wind instrument emerging faintly from the surrounding woods. She stopped in her tracks, looked around, and, aside from Narunn and Lah walking a few steps ahead, saw no other souls. She listened for it again but heard only the rustling of leaves. She must’ve imagined it. She hadn’t slept well the night before, waking in the dark to the sound of a child’s crying, only to realize it wasn’t Lah’s but her own. She’d then lain awake, silencing herself against the pillow, until the pitch-blackness lightened to dawn.
Her tiredness was making her hallucinate, she thought, standing stock-still on the path.
“Something the matter?” Narunn asked, walking back to her, Lah high on his shoulders.
“I thought I heard music . . .” A chill ran through her as soon as she said it, and then came the reply, echoing across ancient forests, across time—Out here, there’s only music of the ghosts.
Teera felt weak. She needed to sit down. Narunn lifted Lah off his shoulders, unwound the kroma from his neck, and spread it for them under the canopy of the giant strangling figs.
The instrument resurfaced, louder now, the unmistakable lament of a coconut tro. Other instruments emerged, joining in one by one—a bamboo flute or an oboe, a drum, a zither, a xylophone, cymbals and bells—until a whole ensemble resounded through the forest. The three listened, Teera and Narunn leaning into each other, heads and shoulders touching; Lah sprawled in front of them, her tiny head in Narunn’s lap. The melody shimmered, bloomed, and cascaded. Then, gradually, it evaporated. Only the echoes of the drum remained, like the footfalls of some unseen guardian enjoying a late-afternoon stroll, taking pleasure in the sunlight coruscating from the leaves.
The three listeners rose and headed toward the source of the music. Something magical and divine. Teera let her imagination indulge. An ensemble of forest sprites, or apsaras and devatas, those deities depicted on the bas-relief of the temple they’d just seen. What inspired beings had rendered such a beguiling, ethereal tune?
A small thatched roof came into view, and in its shelter, on a raised bamboo platform, a group of musicians were retuning their instruments. One of them looked up and slowly turned toward the crackle of feet on pebbles and leaves. He was blind, the lids of his eyes sealed shut into two ridged lines. Sensing approaching listeners, he lifted the bow of his three-stringed tro, which, in fact, had only one working string. He tuned his entire body to listen again, and then, as if sensing something else—the quiver of another’s heart, the current of sorrow from a long-forgotten time—placed the bow back down on his lap.
Narunn offered greetings to the men, whose clothes were so threadbare they assumed the color of earth and straw. He introduced himself by way of his village—“a child of Elephant Tusk Landing”—and Teera and Lah as his “family.” He conversed with them as though they were brothers and uncles, smiled and laughed in response to their questions, and asked what Teera was too overcome to ask. How long have you been playing together as a group? Were you musicians before your injuries? How were you injured? The last question, Teera was certain, Narunn knew the answer to, just by looking at the scars, the patterns of healing, but he asked anyway for her sake, sensing her wonder. An amputee, who handled his worn prosthetic as though it were a priceless musical instrument, said he had been a rice farmer; another a fisherman who’d explored every tributary of the Tonle Sap; one a soldier in the government army after the Khmer Rouge; another a soldier during the Khmer Rouge, forced to fight as the regime was falling. The tro player had been a teacher, until he couldn’t see, couldn’t read and write, not even for himself, let alone teach another to do so. Land mines were their common enemy. Their scars, their wounds, their missing limbs, and these partially broken instruments salvaged from the city’s refuse—all brought them together. Teera listened mutely, moved beyond words by this ensemble of disfigurement, dearth, and undiminished dignity.