Into this broken landscape, Tun wandered, dragging his mutilated self, the limbs now unshackled but severely encumbered by injuries both recent and old. At one point, feeling the phantom weight of the chain that for so long had bound his wrists, he looked down and noted his swollen fingers, the bloody and purulent tips, some with half-torn nails, others without nails at all. They did not look like human hands, more like claws belonging to some buried creature that had dug its way out of the grave. He remembered the last few sessions as one interminable stretch, the pliers exacting payment again and again. Such steady fingers you have, holding that blade, hiding it from us. Let’s see how steady they are now . . . Then, he regained consciousness one day to find that abruptly everything stopped. No more taunting voices, no more torture, no more guards. Just a suspended disquiet, followed by a hollow stillness, as if some monstrous presence had put down its club and trident, all its implements, and vacated the premises, disappearing into thin air.
A group of bedraggled, emaciated townsfolk appeared a day or two later, unlocking the cells, setting the surviving prisoners free. The man who unshackled Tun said, heaving in his own wretchedness, “There were rumors.” He looked down, ashamed. “No, more than that . . . We heard the tormented screams, the dying pleas. We smelled the awful stench all around us. But we didn’t want to believe. How could they turn a temple into such a place? Now we see.” Again, he looked down in shame. “The earth will never forgive us.” Among the thousands of victims brought to the prison over the months and years, Tun was one of the few to walk out of the gate that day.
Now, as he stumbled through the town, he could not tell the living from the dead. Both haunted him. Unable to bear the presence of either, he gathered what he could—a length of rope, discarded clothes, a rusty hatchet, trifling scraps of abandoned food—and headed into the hills. He knew how to survive in the jungle. He’d done it once before. Besides, it wasn’t survival he sought so much as solitude. After months amidst the howls of torture, he wished for nothing more than a muted vanishing, in the way a dying tree might recede from sight, suffocated by mosses and clinging vines. There was a real chance that he may end violently: a tiger could attack and eat him alive, but still he would know that its ferocity was motivated by hunger, not hate. He’d rather confront the impartial cruelty of nature. If other human beings could do what he and his fellow countrymen had done to one another, then he wanted no part of this race. He did not understand how and why he survived, but until death arrived, he sought a humanless existence.
In the jungle, he began to heal, his strength reasserting itself, only to realize he was not alone. Another self had taken root inside of him, with a will stronger than his own. Should you come out the lone victor in this battle, then find my daughter, find my wife . . . take my place. At first he tried to silence it like he did the other voices in his head. When that failed, he beseeched it to go away, he reasoned and cajoled, offering explanations on the inanity of certain hopes, the merit of acceptance. There is peace in letting go. You of all people should know this. He argued, and argued, to the point that he often lost track of which side of the argument he was on, which identity was his own and which was subsumed—exhumed. You promised me, Tun. Who was he addressing now? Who was he, this self that survived, this body that walked and talked, arising into its own? At times, he felt like a crazed animal, a tiger stalking its tail, circling its own shadow. It’s just as well . . . that I never had the chance to bury it. The drum, and the other instruments. The music will endure . . . Round and round it spun, invoking the cadence of another promise, a pact made all the more powerful because it was pledged to oneself. I would use the rest of the time to make other instruments, bringing together those for the dead and those for the living, fusing two disparate ensembles to create a unique one . . . Yes, sacrilegious, I know. But then again, I had yet to die. The words gained clarity, took on urgency, propelling him toward a path. He emerged from isolation and found his way to the village where the instruments had been left, to reclaim them, to see what remained. To know for certain that some part of him—Sokhon—lived, and triumphed. The truth will echo through, even under the weight of a mountain of forced confessions.
Tun found the instruments, which had been rescued and cared for by a fellow musician, the head of the village musical troupe, a former cadre himself who had barely escaped the purge. As for Sokhon’s lost family, the villagers weren’t even aware he had a wife and daughter to begin with. If, as Tun had once believed, there was a chance they may still be alive, then how would he confront them? The weight of what he’d done descended upon him again. What possibility had he severed? He wondered if he’d misread the signals at the end. Misread the most important thing. That sudden brief flicker in Sokhon’s frozen gaze, which, Tun had thought in his confusion and agony, was a glint of light reflecting off the raised, moving blade. When it was done, the blade having dropped to the floor unnoticed, Sokhon closed his eyes. Tun howled. The strength it must’ve taken to close those eyes.
Tun left the village, gathering the instruments like the cherished remains of his friend. Music . . . or revolution, Sokhon had said. Before us lay these two paths . . . Perhaps it was not too late. In another village, Tun began a new life, hiding himself in music, in the anonymity of a street performer. Every now and then, he’d pick up the sampho and tap it gently, remembering Sokhon’s hidden invocation, searching for the truth it might reveal. But he heard nothing, only the secret incantation of his own heart. Mercy . . . or murder? Which had he committed? Again and again, it echoed.
“For the last twenty-five years, I’ve asked myself this question, lived with the burden of that choice.” He looks up, facing her in the gathering night. “It was mid-December 1978 when I last held your father. It was the dry season, like now . . .”
Yet, he notes in this fading light, the monsoon has descended upon her, soaking her chin, the front of her blouse, her scarf. She is shivering. Still, she stays rooted to the spot, hands clasped in her lap, fighting her own collapse. Sita, he wants to say, but remembers whose heart he’s breaking.
“Suteera . . .” He wishes now only to hold her. “Suteera, had I known our release from Slak Daek was just breaths away, I would not have carried out our pact. But that is the terrible nature of choice—right or wrong, one only learns after, if at all.”