It looks to be an overcast day, the river phantom gray, the sky endlessly somber. For the Old Musician, it’s cold, bone-chilling at times, especially in the night and early dawn. But for Teera, it’s perfect, the most pleasant weather she’s experienced in these past few months. She dresses lightly but modestly for the temple, a simple silk sarong and cotton blouse, a soft organza scarf draped diagonally across her chest, a mantle of humility in this place of worship. He is bundled in several layers, one loose tunic on top of the other over a pair of wraparound pants, a grayish kroma wound around his neck to protect his throat from the seasonal chill. A thermos of hot water sits in front of him, along with a couple of tall, thick glasses, which this time he’s had the foresight to borrow from the temple. He offers her plain hot water and apologizes for having nothing else. She tells him she’s gotten used to drinking it again, no matter the weather, like a real koan Khmer. He fills her glass, and then his, wondering whether she’s just being kind, or whether indeed she’s acclimating. Steam rises and evaporates.
The water is still too hot, he tells her, so they ought to let it sit. She tells him that in Minnesota this is summer temperature, but here everyone freezes. As if to concur, he brings his palms over his glass, cradling the warmth. How fragile he looks, Teera thinks, remembering the last time they were face-to-face, the marks of history riddling his body, the weight of it upon him. Yet, he also appears somehow lightened. Just as she, to the Old Musician, appears transformed—more rooted in some way by her journeys.
Only moments ago he arrived, waiting in the ceremony hall, and she came soon after, lowering herself on the straw mat in front of him to his right so that he could see her with his good eye. Channara, he thought for a breathless second. In traditional attire, she looked exactly like her mother. The long tamarind-colored skirt and cream blouse, cut to fit her slender frame as was popular in the 1960s, intimated a preference for classic simplicity, an inherited sense of elegance. She greeted him, palms together in the customary sampeah, and he saw too her father, the eyes that seemed at once intensely focused and endlessly seeking. Sokhon’s resolute will, the pinprick flicker of light he’d taken with him when he closed his eyes for the last time.
She carries it now, this piercing luminosity. It radiates as she speaks. A beacon turning, turning, turning . . . Dispelling the shadows and gloom so that he feels his sight has been momentarily restored. The world around him becomes less mottled, less mangled. He listens without a word, without moving. He could listen to her forever.
“Narunn sends you his greetings,” she tells him, flushing whenever she says the doctor’s name, a secret happiness making her glow all the more. “He’s purchasing a piece of land on Chruay Chongvar. Something he’s thought about for a long time, but never found a compelling reason for until now. He wants to build a home.” Her voice chimes with nervous joy. “He’s there now, signing the contract, having a final survey. Lah is with him. They’re inseparable.” She blossoms at this image.
He’s not surprised by her words. When Dr. Narunn offered to take the child and look after her for however long necessary, the Venerable Kong Oul felt his prayers had been answered. I never once thought to ask the doctor, the abbot had confided, at least not to become a full-time caretaker of the girl, given he’s a man on his own. It’s a weighty responsibility, not to mention fraught with uncertainty. Yet, I can’t think of anyone more suited, more heavensent. The heart loves in spite of uncertainty, he thought of telling the abbot then. It continues to love in spite of danger and loss. Instead, he said, Sometimes, Venerable, the smallest, most vulnerable life has the power to move the heavens.
He returns his attention to the heart blooming before him. She goes on to recount the trip she took several weeks ago to Siem Reap. How she and Narunn had decided spontaneously, telephoned the abbot and received permission to take Lah with them, packed in a mad rush, then left that very evening on the last flight, afraid that if they waited until the next morning, they’d change their minds.
She tells him how they’d landed in the small airport amidst fields of tall grass, greeted by fireflies blinking in the peripheral darkness, mimicking the stars in the night sky. She tells him about the small boutique hotel with traditional wooden houses where in pitch-blackness she woke one night to the presence of her own ghost, its unfinished weeping.
The timbre of her voice, the flow of words, her calm and generous revelation, this unreserved sharing that feels like forgiveness. He takes it all in, drinks it like fluid, the glass of water in front of him forgotten. How like her mother she is—gracious, wise. And yet, unlike her also—gentle and open.
Teera, undeterred by his silence, keeps talking. All this time she’s feared to trespass, even as she hungers to understand. But, if she doesn’t push against the door, how will she know whether it’s locked? She tells him about their visits to the temples of Angkor, and to Banteay Srei, its delicate yet splendidly carved red sandstones, its libraries with ornate real doorways as well as illusory ones, intimating perhaps that learning is a gathering of knowledge, the known and the manifested, as well as a leap of imagination, a reach for the mysterious, the invisible. Walking around the concentric courtyards, you certainly feel the ghosts of ancient scholars, hear the echoes of their ruminations.
As she says this, he espies the ghost beside her, one of many now in their midst. He’s often wondered when Channara died, whether at the beginning of the regime or toward the end, and how. What was her state of mind as she succumbed to death? What surged through her heart? Love, anger, bitterness . . . regret, that most pernicious poison? He considers briefly whether he should ask, but just as quickly changes his mind. What good would it do now to know this? Such knowledge would not stanch his bleeding, reverse his disintegration.