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ALSO BY ALAN LIGHTMAN
FICTION
Mr g
Ghost
Reunion
The Diagnosis
Good Benito
Einstein’s 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
THREE FLAMES
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s 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: Cambodia—History—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3562.I45397 T47 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057994
Jacket design by Jaya Miceli
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
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This book is dedicated to the strong and courageous young women of the Harpswell Foundation.
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 wasn’t sure. She hadn’t 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? It’s been so many years.”
“Do you remember when I saw Cousin Mala after forty years? You didn’t believe me then either.”
Pich didn’t 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 Kamal’s 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 he’d been gored by a neighbor’s 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.
“What’s there to do? Why do you want to think about such a useless thing? It’s a waste