Free The Disappeared by Kim Echlin

happened to your family.
    What I know belongs to another person, you said. Better to shut it away in a closed box. Let’s go out.
    I followed you. Of course. We crossed the street to the wide promenade by the river. I saw Sopheap’s noodle cart and we stopped for noodles and when she saw you her eyes sparkled and she asked, Is it him?
    I nodded and she laughed and handed us two bowls of noodles, said, No money today. Today is a celebration.
    After we finished eating we walked along the river in the gathering heat of morning and you said, Who else do you already know here? I forgot how free you are.
    We walked in front of the Royal Palace and you said, Have you visited yet? We passed through the Chan Chaya Pavilion where the dancers once performed, up the marble staircase and over the silver tiles of the Pagoda of the Emerald Buddha. We looked at the Emerald Buddha made of Baccarat crystal and the gold Buddha encrusted with diamonds and a small silver and gold stupa that contained a relic of the Buddha from Sri Lanka. I liked best the standing Burmese Buddha made of marble, and you showed me the library of sacred texts inscribed on palm leaves. We watched two children playing a game like tic-tac-toe in the sand and looked at the golden roofs of the palace with their flame-shaped peaks and naga snakes and bright bluemosaics and we watched geckos darting under enormous urns planted with palms. You said, Remember how we visited all the churches of Montreal? We walked back to a sidewalk café below the FCC and drank strong Italian coffee and we talked about eleven years of days, and restless, you said, Let’s go listen to music.

 
     
     
     
23
     
    I thought we were going to a café but instead I followed you to a squatter camp called Dey Krohom. You bought a sack of rice in one of the markets. Rows of huts of corrugated metal and plastic sheeting and woven rattan. Broken coconut husks on the ground. The smell of charcoal and wood fire. You led me through the narrow paths to a house where a man with pocked skin lay dozing on a kgrair behind a pair of black sunglasses. You called softly, Uncle, it is me, and you placed the rice under his wooden slatted bed.
    His face was instantly cut in two by a wide smile and as he sat up, you leaned into my hair and joked in English, Meet Ray Charles, but to him you said in respectful Khmer, Teacher Kong Nai, I have brought a friend who likes your music. You put my hand in his. Nai smiled at me and squeezed my hand in his warm palm. You said, Would you play? and he called back into the house to a young woman who brought out his old instrument. He tucked his legs sideways under him and played and sang stories of giants and harvest and he sang his own name. Two little girls appeared from the outside edge of his home and danced, wrists bent back, graceful fingers spread, and adults slipped away from their cooking fires to listen. Kong Nai felthis wife approach and turned toward her with that luminous smile. He played the music that I had heard on your cassette tapes in the room on Bleury Street, the bluesy moan of strings and human voice. You glanced at me and studied the master’s fingers and looked at the small crowd of people listening.
    Most of the musicians were dead and most of the dancers were dead and most of the painters were dead. Some who lived hid themselves away and drank. Some had pretended to be mad to survive and could not fully shed their pretended madness. Some said, Better artists than I were killed, but they found the strength to keep working. When Nai finished, he said to me, Come any time. I like to play.
    We walked out through the narrow pathways and you said, Nai is the one I wanted to bring to L’air du temps.
    Salt sweat and wood smoke and the river. The light of little fires, the smell of cooking rice and frying fish. The darkness of a city still unlit.
    How did he survive?
    He harvested corn and beans. He made palm rope. He sang revolutionary songs. By the end,