Three Flames. Alan Lightman

Sophal told Nita’s parents that there were only four girls left in the class, against seventeen boys, and that Nita was the best student in the entire class. In fact, the best in five years. None of the other students paid attention for one entire minute during the day. Then the teachers began complaining about how they got paid only forty dollars a month, and there was no toilet in the school. Their only satisfaction was a good student like Nita, every five years. At the least, she should be allowed to finish high school, they said. Navin “the little scientist” had finished high school three years ago and was working as a tour guide in Siem Reap and sending her parents thirty dollars a month. Two girls from the nearby town of Praek Khmau had even gone to university. Nita could be the first girl from their village to go to university. Times were changing, they said.

      As the teachers were talking, Krou Sophal put her arm around Nita’s shoulder—as if bonding them in a shared vision of great things for the future. A future in which Nita would graduate from high school and then go on to university like the girls of Praek Khmau and bring honor and glory to Praek Banan, and perhaps even a toilet for the school and increased salaries for its teachers. Actually, Nita had not been aware that she was the best student in five years. That knowledge solidified her ambitions. The future was beckoning.

      Pich didn’t say a word. He just sat picking at the dirt under his fingernails.

      Nita hated working on the farm. She hated tossing the smelly cow dung and beating the rice seeds into the mud and sifting out the snails. It was stupid work. Did the other farmers think she was stupid, like them? Using her math brain to sift snails? This was temporary work, she told herself. Sometimes, she brought along a bag of salt and sprinkled it on the snails, a little at a time, and watched them slowly dissolve and turn into mush. Let them suffer a little, she thought. Suffering was part of life. At night, after she and Sreypov went behind the dangling sheet and undressed, she studied her schoolbooks with a kerosene lamp. When she was studying, she forgot who she was and where she was, and she just floated in the Land of Learning. But she knew that she would probably never be in school again.

      It was a few months later that Nita’s father began dropping hints about this man he knew in Battambang. Noth Bun was his name. Actually, Pich had never met this man, but his cousin in Battambang knew him. “Cousin Narith knows a rich bachelor,” Pich said one night. One minute before, he’d been talking about how many kilos of rice he’d reap in the next harvest, and suddenly he was talking about Mr. Noth. A week later Pich said to Ryna, as if he was talking only to her, but loudly, “I heard that Mr. Noth is very handsome.” That’s all he said. Who was this Mr. Noth? Nita wondered. But she never interrupted when her parents were talking.

      One afternoon, Pich said, “Mr. Noth is pretty young for somebody so rich.” “How old is he?” asked Ryna. “Cousin Narith says he’s thirty-eight,” said Pich. “That’s a good age.” “How did he become rich?” asked Nita’s brother, Kamal, who was allowed to interrupt. “I heard he sells rubber from the rubber trees,” said Pich. “He’s a businessman.”

      After a few weeks of this kind of talk, it was like Noth Bun was a member of the household. Nita had never heard his name before a month ago, and now he was practically eating at their table. Of course, she knew what her father was doing. But she didn’t want any of it. Look at Lina. What good did a husband do her? Nita had another friend, Chenda, who worked day and night making food for her husband and his friends and washing his clothes and his uncle’s clothes and taking care of their two babies. Chenda used to be so pretty. By the time she was eighteen, her face looked like a stone. Nita’s friend Sreyden had been married only six months when her husband walked out on her, leaving her with five hundred dollars of debt.

      Long ago, when Nita was still a little girl, her mother had told her while they were washing clothes in the river that she didn’t have to get married if she didn’t want to.

      Pich kept talking about this Noth Bun, and one day he announced that the man was coming all the way from Battambang to meet the family. “You should be nice to him, kon srey,” said Pich. “It’s a long trip.”

      “Why is he coming?” Nita asked, knowing perfectly well why he was coming.

      “He wants to meet you,” said Pich. “He’s rich. He could take good care of you.” He paused. “And maybe send a little bit to us.”

      “There must be other girls, in Battambang,” Nita said. She understood that she shouldn’t say something with a knife blade in it to her father, but the words just came out of her mouth. Ryna looked over at Pich and waited for him to talk.

      “Mr. Noth has heard that you are clever,” said Pich. “And he and Cousin Narith are good friends.”

      “Just let him meet you,” said Ryna. “You don’t need to say anything to him.”

      Pich frowned at his wife. “Daughter should certainly talk to him,” he said.

      The next Sunday, in mid-afternoon, a big silver car drove up the rutted road to Nita’s house. It couldn’t get all the way, because of the mud, so it stopped about a hundred meters from the gate, and Mr. Noth began walking. It had to be Mr. Noth, thought Nita. She’d never seen a car like that in her village. She hurried down the ladder and ran to Lina’s house and hid in her storage shed.

      An hour later, Nita heard her mother’s voice from outside the shed. “Dearest daughter, mi-oun, please come out now.”

      “I don’t want to.”

      For a while, Ryna didn’t say anything. “I know how you feel,” she said.

      “So don’t make me come out,” Nita said.

      “Dear daughter . . . I love you so much. Do you understand that?”

      “Yes.”

      “You remind me of myself when I was your age. You’re prettier and smarter than I was. I was so confused. I didn’t know anything about anything. I didn’t really know your father. But look at us. We’ve made a life together. It’s been twenty-five years now.”

      “I’m not you,” said Nita.

      “Your father wants you to meet Mr. Noth,” said Ryna.

      “What do you want?” said Nita.

      “My dearest daughter,” Ryna said in a low voice, almost whispering. She hesitated. “I want you to stay in school. But . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.

      Nita sat down on an old bucket in the shed. She tossed off her flip-flops and pressed her foot hard against a rock until she could feel the pain. Nita loved her mother. She thought about how her mother was just doing what she had to do, so she came out of the shed, but she slammed the door so hard that the wood splintered, and she didn’t say a word to her mother as they walked back to their house.

      Mr. Noth sat in one of the two chairs of the house, Pich in the other. Pich was wearing his nice silk shirt, which he usually wore only during the Khmer New Year. Mr. Noth was dressed in a jacket and lace-up shoes. He had bushy eyebrows that met in the middle, and the hair on his head was starting to fall out, and when he stood up he leaned to one side, as if one leg were shorter than the other. Maybe it was.

      Nita stood against the wall, keeping a distance. Mr. Noth knew that she’d been hiding somewhere. “I like a girl with spirit,” he said, and grinned. Nita noticed that he had all of his teeth. At least he had that. Mr. Noth began asking her questions about various things, like what kinds of jobs people did in her village and the cost of tires at the market. At first, Nita didn’t want to talk to him. But she knew all the answers. And she did have her dignity.

      “She’s a pretty girl, isn’t she,” said Ryna.

      “Not so pretty,” said Mr. Noth, “but she’s clever.”

      “Yes, she’s clever,” said Pich. That was the first time in her life that Nita had ever heard her father say she was clever.

      Lina was angry at Nita for planning to marry a man who lived far away. She said she’d probably never see Nita again.