(6 of 7)
She will not respond to this question. Not now. But she has answered it before. After two years of silence she at last explained the device—if not fully, at least enough to allow a guess as to how it worked. The children harvesting rice include Sokhar; she is the largest of the three. Whenever a child refused to work, he was punished with the circular device. The soldiers would place it over the child's head. Three people would hold it steady by means of ropes (the three lines at the bottom). A fourth would grab hold of the ring at the end of the other rope (the line at the top). The device worked like a camera lens, the areas between the lines in the drawing being metal blades. When the rope with the ring was pulled, the lens would close, and the child would be decapitated. A portable guillotine. But it wasn't the soldiers who worked the device. It was the children.
Outside the rain splashes down, then stops just as suddenly, and everything is hot again.
The children are excited; they are about to perform a few of their folk dances. Some older boys are shooting baskets on a hard dirt court. They laugh in surprise when the American visitor blocks a shot. They did not know that defense was part of the game.
Behind the wat is a shack where the coffins are kept before cremation; and behind that, near a patch of sweet potatoes, the crematorium sits in a clearing under a shed, like a doll's chapel. There is no activity there today. But the wat itself is busy with a festival marking the last day of the Buddhist Lent. A monk in yellow sits cross-legged on a table, while children crouched in a circle burn incense. The smoke is supposed to fly to heaven in order to beckon their ancestors to descend and join them.
Other children are playing soccer in uniforms on a huge dirt field. Some enjoy the playground. A naked baby stands before a swing, perplexed as to how to work it. A few busy themselves in the arts hut, painting or carving elaborate wooden musical instruments like the take and the kail. This is where Nep Phem likes to spend his time. When asked why art is important to him, he answers: "So that I may give something to someone, and allow someone to love me in return."
But most of the children are in the theater tent now—the "Khao I Dang National Theater"—milling and chattering with expectation. Then the bright pink curtains part, showing a backdrop painting of Angkor Wat. The xylophone plays the water-drop music. The dancers enter. The boys strut, the girls cock their hands and heads and do not smile. They glow with color, their dark brown skins set off by the deep blues, reds and greens of their sarongs and sashes. They do four dances, starting with a hunting dance in which a small boy brandishes a spear and tries to look ferocious. The coconut dance is the most fun and the most intricate, as the children clap halves of coconuts from hand to hand. They flirt, but do not touch.