Read Online The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers by Anton Piatigorsky - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anton Piatigorsky
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each frozen like a chiselled figure in an Angkoran relief. Then came the lulling and enchanting music of the
pin peat
orchestra: the wailing, nearly vocal line of the wind instrument, the
sralai
; the multi-rhythmic clangs and pings of the xylophones; the throbbing pulse of the
samphor
and
skor thom
drums beneath. And when the central dancer, in a bodysuit and brocade skirt as white as her foundation, stepped forward to play Mera and the xylophones and high flute promptly dropped away and the vocalist’s mournful lines soared like a night insect, Sâr’s skin erupted in goosebumps. But what Sâr remembers most, right now, sitting on the park bench, is how the background dancers, with their peaked Apsara crowns and strings of jasmine flowers dangling from their ears, stepped forward to move in unison with their leader. It was only then that Sâr realized the full value of the event, the personal religious significance it would secretly hold for him.
In the synchronicity of music and movement, the dancers lost their individuality and moved as one. Their pigeon-toed feet tapped on the pavilion’s smooth tile, sliding and pushing against the hard floor in syncopated steps. Their heads waved in almost imperceptible figure eights. The dancers kneeled on one knee, with their hands extended in superhuman contortions and the flattened soles of their back feet facing the ceiling, as if they were indeed goddesses soaring through the sky. The music exploded into a frenzy of atonal xylophones and pounding drums, led by a single, screaming flute. Yes, they were goddesses, their boundaries blended bymusic, their individuality lost in their precise movements, in routines that had been passed down for generations. They were no longer women with concrete histories but, in fact, Apsaras.
A total loss of self: that is the true value of the dance. It induces proper consciousness and right thinking. Humans are better creatures, Sâr knows, when they have lost their egos and desires, when they have abandoned themselves. Saloth Sâr, sitting on the iron bench in the park by the river, recalls his blissful engrossment in that performance, how he forgot which dancer was Chanlina, how it no longer mattered. He recalls how, with his knees tucked up against his chin—for he was already embarrassed by his egregious desire and brash humanity—he longed to disappear into the collective nothingness like one of those beautiful dancers before him, how he longed to annihilate himself through performance.
“So it can be done,” he says, sitting on the bench. “It can happen.”
He watches a fluffy white cloud block the sun over the river, casting the park into shadow.
Could there be
, he wonders,
somewhere in the world, a special dance to erase me, Saloth Sâr?
The clap of firecrackers precedes her. Hired labourer Wu has been given the important task of igniting these mini-explosions, and his gap-toothed smile as he steps away from the black smoke indicates his pleasure with the assignment. A giggle whistles through his nose as the unnamed woman of the Luo family, riding inside the Maos’ frayed sedan chair, arrives in their open courtyard. It’s been a long and bumpy ride on the shoulders of four dangerously thin peasants. The perspiring men groan as they lower her sedan onto the gravel.
“She’s here,” says Jen-sheng, the Mao family patriarch. He’s a short and skinny man, dressed in a new cotton robe that stretches down to his ankles. His tiny eyes regard the arriving party through the front window. Madam Mao, the local matchmaker and a distant relation, stands outside beside the sedan, waiting for the next phase of the ritual. She spies Jen-sheng through the window and responds to his fierce squint with an unimpressed nod. Madam Mao is a dour old lady who smells of rancid congee and sweat. Nuptial families throughout Hsiangtan county gossip in the packed tea houses about the odorous matchmaker, how she devours their egg noodles and taints
pin peat
orchestra: the wailing, nearly vocal line of the wind instrument, the
sralai
; the multi-rhythmic clangs and pings of the xylophones; the throbbing pulse of the
samphor
and
skor thom
drums beneath. And when the central dancer, in a bodysuit and brocade skirt as white as her foundation, stepped forward to play Mera and the xylophones and high flute promptly dropped away and the vocalist’s mournful lines soared like a night insect, Sâr’s skin erupted in goosebumps. But what Sâr remembers most, right now, sitting on the park bench, is how the background dancers, with their peaked Apsara crowns and strings of jasmine flowers dangling from their ears, stepped forward to move in unison with their leader. It was only then that Sâr realized the full value of the event, the personal religious significance it would secretly hold for him.
In the synchronicity of music and movement, the dancers lost their individuality and moved as one. Their pigeon-toed feet tapped on the pavilion’s smooth tile, sliding and pushing against the hard floor in syncopated steps. Their heads waved in almost imperceptible figure eights. The dancers kneeled on one knee, with their hands extended in superhuman contortions and the flattened soles of their back feet facing the ceiling, as if they were indeed goddesses soaring through the sky. The music exploded into a frenzy of atonal xylophones and pounding drums, led by a single, screaming flute. Yes, they were goddesses, their boundaries blended bymusic, their individuality lost in their precise movements, in routines that had been passed down for generations. They were no longer women with concrete histories but, in fact, Apsaras.
A total loss of self: that is the true value of the dance. It induces proper consciousness and right thinking. Humans are better creatures, Sâr knows, when they have lost their egos and desires, when they have abandoned themselves. Saloth Sâr, sitting on the iron bench in the park by the river, recalls his blissful engrossment in that performance, how he forgot which dancer was Chanlina, how it no longer mattered. He recalls how, with his knees tucked up against his chin—for he was already embarrassed by his egregious desire and brash humanity—he longed to disappear into the collective nothingness like one of those beautiful dancers before him, how he longed to annihilate himself through performance.
“So it can be done,” he says, sitting on the bench. “It can happen.”
He watches a fluffy white cloud block the sun over the river, casting the park into shadow.
Could there be
, he wonders,
somewhere in the world, a special dance to erase me, Saloth Sâr?
The clap of firecrackers precedes her. Hired labourer Wu has been given the important task of igniting these mini-explosions, and his gap-toothed smile as he steps away from the black smoke indicates his pleasure with the assignment. A giggle whistles through his nose as the unnamed woman of the Luo family, riding inside the Maos’ frayed sedan chair, arrives in their open courtyard. It’s been a long and bumpy ride on the shoulders of four dangerously thin peasants. The perspiring men groan as they lower her sedan onto the gravel.
“She’s here,” says Jen-sheng, the Mao family patriarch. He’s a short and skinny man, dressed in a new cotton robe that stretches down to his ankles. His tiny eyes regard the arriving party through the front window. Madam Mao, the local matchmaker and a distant relation, stands outside beside the sedan, waiting for the next phase of the ritual. She spies Jen-sheng through the window and responds to his fierce squint with an unimpressed nod. Madam Mao is a dour old lady who smells of rancid congee and sweat. Nuptial families throughout Hsiangtan county gossip in the packed tea houses about the odorous matchmaker, how she devours their egg noodles and taints
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