Music is everywhere, voices warbling amidst the reverberations of activity. Again, Teera looks up from her desk and sees that the men are busy sawing and hammering, measuring distances with their steps, pounding stakes into the ground after a certain number of paces, organizing the tall metal poles, unrolling the tarps. They sing as they work, seamlessly finishing one love duet and moving on to the next, as if taking cue from their cell phones ringing every so often. Both duets, Teera notes, are from the past, from pre–Khmer Rouge days, but the words still resonate, speaking to the challenge of romance at a distance, forbidden connections—the hazards of dialing the wrong number, mistaking the voices of strangers for those of desired ones, longings across time and space. One group croons the girl’s lyric, another the boy’s. All?, all?? Oun? . . . Ni peit chhkuat. Mien neak-na chhkuat? Teera laughs, recognizing the comical introduction of this “Hello” song as the caller misdials—“Hello, hello? Darling? . . .” and the voice on the other end responds, “This is an asylum for the insane. Do you have anyone who’s insane?” She wonders if it’s a parody of the “Hello Hello” song she’s hummed to Narunn.
As if sensing her thinking of him, Narunn pokes his head in the doorway and whispers, “The wind chime’s up.” He nods for her to listen, and Teera is suddenly aware of the melodic tinkling beneath her window. “Lah’s very proud that she showed me the proper place to hang it.”
Teera smiles. “I’ll come down now,” she tells him, closing her journal. Narunn skips back down the stairs, the whole house vibrating with his steps, the wind chime jingling louder. Teera gets up from her desk, pausing mid-motion, remembering something. She opens the journal again, takes out the black-and-white photograph, and props it up against a stack of books on one of the floating shelves. “Your new home,” she murmurs to her parents, and the gathered throng, those seen and unseen. “One of many.”
Outside, Lah points to the wind chime hanging from the eave extending over the patio. “Look, Ma-Mieng, it makes those croaking uncles stop singing!”
Narunn bursts out laughing. It’s true. The rainlike song of the wind chime has serenaded the men into silence.
“The Venerable Kong Oul will be happy to know . . . to see it here . . . like this,” Teera says, thinking of the gun the abbot gave to Narunn, its journey, this final transformation.
“Let’s go see what’s cooking!” Narunn exclaims. “I don’t think we had breakfast.”
Teera looks across to Yaya’s land, where the female members of the household are now fully immersed in culinary preparations, with pots steaming, flames leaping from the earthen braziers, the fragrances of spices thickening the air.
“But, Pa-Om,” Lah reminds him, “we cannot eat before the monks!”
“Oh, I’m sure Auntie Ravi has set aside some nibbles for us.”
The monks have arrived, like a row of candle flames moving across the land, their saffron robes and yellow umbrellas lit by the sunlight. They enter the canopy and step barefoot onto the slightly raised platform, leaving their sandals in the grass, their closed umbrellas in a woven basket near the edge. The Venerable Kong Oul lowers himself on the cushion in the middle, his movement so tranquil and weightless that for a second he seems half afloat. Three novices assume their places on either side of him, Makara on his immediate right, a picture of stillness, spiritual discipline. The youth gathers the hem of his robe and tucks it beneath his crossed legs, his gestures restrained, deliberate. He faces the crowd but his gaze recedes inward, delving toward some deep place of solitude. Had Narunn not told Teera of the adolescent’s recent struggle to overcome addiction, she would never have guessed he’d been anything other than a monk, ordained at a tender age.
Those congregated on the straw mats bow three times, murmuring prayers, then sit straight up again, keeping their gazes lowered, palms together in front of their chests, legs folded to one side so their feet point away from the monks. Most of the elders gather in front, among them Yaya, her shorn head swaying in a row of other shorn heads, their traditional black-and-white outfits juxtaposed against the monastic robes so that they appear like a string of moons below a sequence of suns.
As it’s already quite late in the morning, the ceremony begins without delay, in order to give the ordained time to partake of their only meal before noon, the food specially prepared in their honor. The Venerable Kong Oul turns to Makara and gives an encouraging nod. Hands clasped tightly in his lap, Makara begins chanting, his voice tremulous, lips partially revealing a set of marred teeth, and only then does it become obvious he has yet to fully recover. Still, the Venerable Kong Oul has entrusted him with the principal chanting, filling in only when the boy falters with his memorized lines or his voice becomes so strained as to verge on disappearing. It’s common for the abbot, Narunn said, to allow the most vulnerable novices to take ownership of their spiritual practice. In the case of Makara, it has so far proven the most effective path toward his recovery, diverting his attention from his own struggle to focus on the responsibility to extend care to others, learning in small measures to exercise again the neglected faculties of compassion and self-discipline.
The other novices join in the chanting, a ripple alternating on either side of the elder monk, who dips the sacred brush into the font of water and sprinkles the audience, the earth, the air. The wind chime peals, echoing their incantation. Trees yield in supplication to the breeze.
In the back of the gathering, off to one side, Teera keeps looking across the land to Yaya’s house. She was inside their small house, changing into more appropriate clothes, when the monks arrived, and by the time she stepped outside, the ceremony was set to begin, so she was obliged to join and hasn’t yet had a chance to greet the Old Musician. Now a large, leafy banana palm blocks her view, so she can’t see to where he supposedly waits on the carved wooden platform under Yaya’s house, preparing himself for the invocation he will offer.
While the land blessing ceremony is brief, joined by whoever wishes to observe the familiar ritual, the merrymaking will continue throughout the day, with friends and neighbors stopping in to offer greetings, to welcome Narunn to the neighborhood, to enjoy the evolving array of food. Teera has noticed a steady flow of guests arriving, many bringing their own specialties to contribute to the festivity. First they cluster around the cooking area, bantering with Ravi and the women in charge of the cooking, inhaling the aromas of the dishes they’ll soon enjoy. Then gradually they meander to the straw mats spread across the grounds, glad to be sitting in the sun on this refreshingly cool, windy day.