“It’s a collider. A big tunnel, like a circle,” said Raksmey, tracing a loop with his finger. There were new lines beneath Tien’s eyes and across his forehead. “Things here are not good?”
Tien shook his head. “Not so good. Maybe you should not come.”
“I had to come.”
Tien smiled, nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“Rak,” said Raksmey.
“Rak,” said Tien.
• • •
THEY WALKED OUT into the heat. Raksmey almost gasped as the heavy air strangled him. His pores flexed open, his breath shortened, his pupils dilated and then contracted with this sudden transfer of energy. The molecules in his skin began to sputter and churn, tuning themselves to the temperature of the world, and yet his body settled into an enduring weariness, his walk morphing into an improvised lean. It was out of this paradox — of quick molecules and slow bodies — that the great, beautiful sadness of the tropics arose, causing men and country alike to fall and rise and fall again. When Raksmey felt this familiar malaise, felt his skin both alive and dead, he knew he was finally home.
Tien hailed a tuk-tuk. They wove through a quiet, sullen Phnom Penh. Women hanging up laundry eyed them warily as they passed.
“You live here now?” asked Raksmey.
“I’m having trouble,” said Tien. His voiced quavered.
“I brought you something,” said Raksmey. From his pocket he produced a coin. He placed it in his friend’s palm. “Rak.”
Tien stared at the little silver circle. His eyes grew moist.
“The world is not so big,” he said.
“Very small, in fact,” said Raksmey.
They rode through the city, past a marketplace that had been bombed. Streaks of soot rising from broken windows.
“Tell me, Tien, did he suffer?”
Tien shook his head. “No. He did not.”
“You saw?”
“When he went, he went like this.” He clapped his hands around the coin.
“Tell me, Tien. Tell me everything. I want to know.”
• • •
AND SO ENDS that slim little wonder that is Jeg er Raksmey. In a review of the novella in Vinduet, Røed-Larsen declares this ending “a curious failure of invention for a man whose only gift was an overactive imagination” (125). Other reviews complained about how such an ending left too much unexplained. Dagfinn Møller writes, in the final issue of Profil, that “this last line. . a plea for information, for anything concrete. . becomes the voice of a reader left in the lurch” (102).
Tofte-Jebsen never responded publicly to these criticisms, but in a lecture at the Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek in 1983, he advanced this theory of fiction making:
If you grow too comfortable with your book, I say dismantle it (“demontere det”). Put it into a paper bag and heave it out the window. . no matter if it hits someone in the street. You have to clear the decks before you grow complacent. If you’ve lived with even one eye open you’ll know what I’m talking about — change is the only force that keeps us alive.
He then, it is said, walked out in the middle of the lecture.
Regardless of Tofte-Jebsen’s motives, if we are to discover anything more about Raksmey’s story, we must turn exclusively to Røed-Larsen’s account in Spesielle Partikler. Keep in mind that Røed-Larsen’s Raksmey is not Tofte-Jebsen’s Raksmey (and vice versa). We thus may sense a distinct break in character. To make matters worse, Røed-Larsen points to the nearly impossible challenge of establishing facts in post-independence Cambodia, renamed Democratic Kampuchea. After seizing power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge regime famously declared that time had been reset to “Year Zero,” effectively wiping the slate clean of all Western influence, including historical written records.
Despite such formidable historiographical conditions, Røed-Larsen has done a remarkable job piecing together a crude timeline of Raksmey’s whereabouts from 1965 to 1979, which we may now summarize here.
In the mid-sixties, Raksmey spent three years at Collège Réne Descartes, in Saigon, under the personal tutelage of Rector Than; by all accounts, he excelled magnificently. When the American war in Vietnam began to accelerate, Rector Than had Raksmey graduate early, at age fifteen, while simultaneously convincing the admissions office at the École Polytechnique, in Paris, to admit him, despite his young age. Jean-Baptiste did not come to Saigon to see his son off. Instead, he sent him a letter, a copy of which apparently found its way into Per Røed-Larsen’s possession and was translated in Spesielle Partikler (640):
10 August 1968
Dearest Raksmey,
You must forgive me. I have not been well & am only now recovering from my illnesses. Please do not see my absence as having any reflection on my feelings towards your departure, which I regard with utmost excitement & pride. I have been getting updates from Rector Than about the rapid progress of your application. Your acceptance to the Polytechnique comes as no surprise, though I must admit it does bring me into a certain state of rumination.
You no doubt realized my great aspiration for you to become a physicist, an aspiration that guided the movement of my hand in nearly every choice I made while raising you. I recorded your progress in the volumes upon which I now gaze, volumes that seem lifeless without their subject. I now see this singular mind-set for what it is: a foolish defense which offered me shelter from myself. By sticking to my regime, I could deflect the fear I felt as my love for you grew. When we found you, you were so small, so sick, in the very borderlands of quietus. If only you could have seen the impossibility of your own existence! Your continued survival, against such odds, was extraordinary, & transformed us all — some for the better & some, like myself, I fear for the worse. My wife — whom in my head I still consider your mother — has never left me, & her legacy was alive & well when you floated by in your basket. My project was my way of rescuing you, but it was also my way of rescuing me.
Please, Raksmey, my dearest Raksmey, I beg for your forgiveness & I urge you, as you depart on the biggest journey of your life, to forget all that I have taught you & to listen only to the voice inside your own heart, if such a feat is still possible, given all the damage I have wrought. I am a selfish old man, a jealous, vindictive fool, who had no business doing what he did. Know that whatever path you choose, I will love you no less or no more. I am sorry for what I have inflicted upon you & no doubt what I will continue to inflict with the legacy of my actions. Nothing would make me so happy, or serve me so justly, as to see you decide to take up the profession of a cobbler, a mechanic, or a composer. Anything but the methods of science that I so bound you to.
Be well, my dear Raksmey, Raksmey. I have given you all & here I have nothing left to give.
With highest admiration,
your father,
Jean-Baptiste de Broglie
In the fall of 1968, Raksmey traveled to Paris to begin his studies at the École Polytechnique. He did not return home before this journey. Indeed, since that boat trip down the Mekong with his father and grandmother, Raksmey had not set foot in Cambodia.
Save his impeccable school transcript, not much is known about his time in Paris, about how young Raksmey navigated the trials of a large urban university in the late sixties, about whether he experimented with drugs, sex, or le rock and roll, or whether he simply stuck to his studies, as his prodigious academic record suggests. He took an average of eight classes per semester and graduated in four years, with a highly unusual dual master’s in quantum devices and applied particle physics. He also hosted a weekly classical music show on the university’s radio station, called La Vie Rallentando. What is most interesting is that Raksmey seemed intent on ignoring the advice of his father, which came either too late or too early. He would become Cambodia’s first (and only) particle physicist.