Alan Lightman - Three Flames

Table of Contents

THREE FLAMES

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2019 by Alan Lightman

First hardcover edition: 2019

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

An earlier version of the chapter Ryna first appeared in Daily Lit magazine under the title Reprisals. An earlier version of the chapter Pich first appeared in Consequence magazine.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lightman, Alan P., 1948 author.

Title: Three flames : a novel / Alan Lightman.

Description: First hardcover edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018057994 | ISBN 9781640092280

Subjects: LCSH: CambodiaHistoryFiction.

Classification: LCC PS3562.I45397 T47 2019 | DDC 813/.54dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057994

Jacket design by Jaya Miceli

Book design by Wah-Ming Chang

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Printed in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to the strong and courageous young women of the Harpswell Foundation.

ALSO BY ALAN LIGHTMAN

FICTION

Mr g

Ghost

Reunion

The Diagnosis

Good Benito

Einsteins Dreams

NONFICTION

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

In Praise of Wasting Time

Screening Room

The Accidental Universe

A Sense of the Mysterious

Dance for Two

The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Science

Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists

Time for the Stars

Ancient Light: Our Changing View of the Universe

POETRY

Song of Two Worlds

CONTENTS

Ryna had just finished putting a quarter kilo of pork and a half dozen rambutan into her burlap shopping bag, wondering if her husband would scold her for spending too much, when she saw the man who had murdered her father. At first she wasnt sure. She hadnt seen the man for thirty-three years, since she was twelve years old, and he was now whitened and bent over and barely able to support his skinny body with a walking stick. But he had the same crooked mouth and angular cheeks that she remembered, the same mole above his left eye, and as she studied him from three stalls away, she became more and more certain. Many times over the years since the war, she had imagined what she would do if she ever saw him again. What she had most wished for was some catastrophe to permanently separate him from his family, as had happened to her family, or for him to be stricken with cancer and die a slow and painful death.

That evening, after her husband had finished eating his dinner, Ryna said to him, I think I saw Touch Pheng in the market this morning. The smell of the pork blended with the odor of mildew, always present during the rainy season, when nothing could be kept dry.

Who? said Pich, wiping his mouth.

The commander of the camp at Sopheak Mongkol.

She looked over at Pich through the dim yellow light and tried to read his expression. The one room of the house was lit only by a single bulb, which dangled from wires that ran along the tin roof, down a wall made of packed palm leaves, around the two storage bags of corn and rice, and finally to a car battery in the corner.

Why are you talking about that? said Pich, annoyed. And anyway, how do you know it was him? Its been so many years.

Do you remember when I saw Cousin Mala after forty years? You didnt believe me then either.

Pich didnt bother replying. He was sharpening the blade of his plow, which he would need to finish preparing his fields for planting. Sharpening blades was their son Kamals job, but Kamal was out as usual, drinking cheap wine in the rain with his friends.

Pich stood and began putting his tools away. He was not much taller than his wife and almost as thin, with fleshy lips, perpetually bloodshot eyes, and a scar on his cheek where hed been gored by a neighbors ox. Now the rain was pinging like gunshots on the tin roof, causing the two oxen under the house to shuffle nervously. Ryna could look down between the bamboo poles of the floor and see their shadowy forms fidgeting below.

What should we do? said Ryna.

Whats there to do? Why do you want to think about such a useless thing? Its a waste of time. And tomorrow dont buy any rambutan. Pich was always especially unpleasant the day after hed spent the night with Lakhena.

I am doing, I dont yet know what.

What is silly Mae Wea going to do?

Something. Unsettled, Ryna sat down next to Thida, her eldest daughter, who began brushing her mothers hair. At age sixteen, Thida had gone to Phnom Penh to work off a family debt. Shed been back home for a year, eating regularly, but her wrists were still smaller than the thickness of a cucumber, and she sometimes began screaming in the middle of the night. Their middle daughter, Nita, Pich had married off at age sixteen to a traveling rubber merchant, who promptly deposited his new wife for safekeeping with his aunt on the far side of Battambang Province. But at least Ryna still had her youngest daughter, Sreypov, her mi-oun, still in school at Rynas fierce insistence. She would give her life to protect Sreypov. Ryna looked over at her youngest daughter, in the corner, reading one of her schoolbooks. Sreypov, although only fourteen, had her own mind and wrote poetry. She was the fire in the family.

Ryna closed her eyes, hoping the long brushstrokes would calm her. Her jet-black hair fell to the middle of her back. Despite her age, she was still an attractive woman, with a slender body and a sympathetic mouth, but her skin had become worn with the heat and the life on the farm, and deep grooves spread out from the corners of her eyes. One could see the Chinese blood on her fathers side, as her nose was more narrow and her skin lighter than pure Khmer.

Ive had enough of silly talk for the day, said Pich. Im getting old. And tomorrow is almost here. Without bothering to take off his sweaty shirt, he lay down on his sleeping mat. Almost immediately, Sreypov and Thida disappeared behind the dangling sheet that partitioned off the tiny area where they undressed and slept.

Once the house had grown silent, Ryna began brooding again about Touch Pheng, and her hands started to shake. She would do something horrible to him. She walked to the corner of the room where the family said prayers for their ancestors. On a table were candles, bits of colored string, photographs of Pichs parents and grandparents and of Rynas mother and two grandmothers. Ryna possessed only a single picture of her father, which she kept safe in a small metal box. Now she lit a candle and took out the photograph, stained and curled around the edges. Here her father was a young man, perhaps twenty-five years old, handsome and sweet. In her mind, she could see the moonless night he was killed, she could see the red glow of the hand-rolled cigarettes of the Khmer Rouge soldiers as they sat under a tree, she could hear their voices as they came to her fathers bunkhouse and called him out along with two other men who had all tried to escape to find missing members of their families. We are moving you to another camp, said Touch Pheng, a phrase whose meaning all understood. She could hear the commanders raspy and arrogant voice. She had seen him order the executions of people before, as easily as if he were swatting mosquitoes. The cadres carried shovels and ropes. Ryna looked at the photograph and said a prayer for her father. Inexplicably, she began thinking of the time they had gone together to Phnom Penh when she was a little girl and sat on the grass below the great monument celebrating the departure of the French. Ryna had never seen a city. Amid the noisy crush of buildings and people flying by on their cycles and motos, her father sat quietly humming a song to her. Somewhere, in the distance, she heard Pich snoring. Ryna put a cupful of sticky rice sweetened with palm sugar on the sleeping mats of each of her children, as she had done for years, and lay down.