For the Sake of All Living Things (101 page)

“Um-hum.”

“The military keeps denying the inaccuracy of the bombings,” he went on, “but look at this place.”

“They also deny that Cambodia is in crisis situation,” she said. She thought to continue but decided against it. The entire press corps chatted constantly about their stories and what finally came through was a homogeneous puree of reduced and preedited facts. Rita bit the inside of her cheek. What, she thought, would have happened on the northern front, without aerial support? Absence of reciprocity? Do you want to be bombed?

Vathana was now on the cot. Her knees were spread, her heels were under her buttocks. Keo had been overly attentive, holding her shoulders, supporting her, talking in his most beautiful voice into her ears. At first it had bolstered her waning confidence but quickly it became bothersome. All about the tent people were talking about Vathana’s labor and about the air raid. Many were still weeping. The number of dead and wounded crept up—50 and 150, 100 and 200, 120 and 250. Many people were stoic, spartan, denying, repressing, internalizing the grief. Vathana too was bitter. Three years, she thought. Three years for naught. These people are no better off today than the day this tent was raised. Another contraction hit.

“That’s it, Angel. Give in to it. Surrender to it. Let it flow. Let me see the baby.”

The contraction passed. Shyly Samnang came close for a hug and Vathana held him and kissed his hair and he blubbered, “ba-ba-ba-ba,” and ran off to see what else was happening.

Again Vathana’s uterus squeezed down. Again she lost herself in thoughts of what could be done. The country has never been worse off. And she answered herself, Nothing. Nothing. Despair grabbed hold of her heart.

Then, “Yes. Yes,” Sophan sung, cheered.

“Eh?” Kosol’s face was brilliant. His chest puffed out.

The contraction’s force was immense. Vathana’s buttocks tightened, her thighs quivered, as she exhaled her cheeks flapped. She pushed. She pushed. She stopped. Her chest heaved regaining air. She shifted to the cot’s edge and Sophan squatted before her. Then her whole body bore down. “Very good,” she heard Sophan’s words. “Let it be very hard. Give me that baby.” Now came the top of a hairy, wrinkled, waxy head. “Oh come, baby,” Sophan cried. “Come, little darling.” Waters covered Sophan’s hands. Vathana grunted. More head comes, ears and eyes. Sophan lifts Vathana’s hand from her quaking thighs and places Vathana’s fingers on the infant’s head. Vathana feels the nose, the mouth. The baby’s mouth seems to kiss her fingers. Vathana’s entire body is recharged. Again she pushes and the head is in Sophan’s hands, turning as if searching upward for mom, then shoulders, an arm, now quickly the torso. Sophan wipes the infant’s face, its head. She pulls and clears its nose. Catches it. “A
girl
!” She squeals. She hands the baby to Vathana, who is being lowered to the cot by Kosol.

“
Immoral fucking
phalang!” Kosol’s voice explodes. Everyone in the tent, half the camp, hears. “Red-haired
fucking
bitch.” He throws a towel he’d had on his shoulder on the baby. Immediately Vathana’s hands, arms swing to protect her. Kosol barges by Sophan, shoves Samnang to the ground, storms from the tent.

“Ms. Donaldson,” Quentin, the reporter from Boston, said. Rita looked at him. He was pale from witnessing the festering and filth of the wounded, ill from the volume of dead. She herself, though hardened, was queasy. More than queasy. Angry. The boy she’d paid to find Vathana had returned with a French-speaking friend who’d told her Mrs. Cahuom had just given birth to a baby girl and could not come. Stupid girl, Rita had thought. What kind of person would bring a kid into this world?!

Quentin smiled. He needed reassurance, yet he tried to keep it light, to not irritate the veteran correspondent. “Hey,” he said. “Did you hear about the miracle?”

“Hum?” Rita would not allow herself to be friendly.

“Did you hear about the lady here who gave birth to a blue-eyed, red-haired baby when the bomb fell. Some of these local yokels think it’s a miracle. Ha! An angel, they say.”

Rita’s look stopped him cold. He huffed, half turned away. “Shit,” he stammered. “You don’t have to be so sensitive. I’m not writing the story.” His smile was gone and he too was angry. Then with his head cocked, he said, “Oh, I get it. ‘Yokels.’ Look, none of these people understand English.”

In the tent Teck knelt beside Vathana’s cot. He held her hand. Samnang hung from his back. Samol sat on Sophan’s lap on the cot’s end, and Louis stood behind Teck. “Step by step,” Teck whispered. His heart was bursting with love for his exhausted wife. “You’ve taught so many the prayer. I looked at the pagoda. I was so afraid. Every step a prayer. Every step a prayer for a miracle.” His face was radiant.

Vathana looked at him. Her eyes closed, opened halfway, closed. The swaddled baby lay in the crook of her arm.

“My father is dead,” Teck whispered to her. “We don’t know where your father is, when we will see him again. Should we ask my mother to name her?”

Vathana smiled weakly but did not open her eyes. Then she whispered, “no. she is named.”

“Eh?” Teck whispered, not hearing her.

“Pech,” Vathana said. “pech. pech su livanh.” She fell asleep.

There was no option. No words could assuage the feelings, the anger, the hate. Even later when Met Sen said, “Come with me,” he could not release it. The clean and pure victory against U.S. imperialism was empty in the absence of a final victory over FANK and Lon Nol. Not simply a victory. Revenge.

Nang ran his pincer index finger down the scab and scar. For two weeks they had carried him north in a hammock hung from shoulder poles. He wouldn’t have done that for any of his wounded yotheas but they were doing it for him. The shame, the disgust, further fueled his inner rage, yet there had been no options. He’d walked as soon as he was allowed. The rains came heavy. A porter had guided him by pulling him with a rope. Each day had been a cleansing struggle purifying his hate and vengeance. They stopped north of Skoun where FANK commanders had abandoned their troops on 2 August and the troops had broken and fled and Angkar had had a great victory devouring and evacuating the enclave. Nang touched the scar where it parted his hair above the left eye. He picked the edge of the scab. The rain had softened it and it smeared beneath his fingernails. His left hand fingers followed the scar to his eyebrow. The skin was a glass-smooth lump. Why the shrapnel had not totally blinded him he didn’t know. His eye had been damaged yet he was sure it was healing. He closed his right eye to test the left. Yotheas and porters were rising from their rest. Through Nang’s left eye they were but blurry green or black oblongs. He closed both eyes, thought he heard the drone of T-28s, shivered. Even with both eyes open he could see Duch’s head, see Duch’s face staring horrified at Nang’s; not because of his, Duch’s, own wound, but because of Nang’s.

Nang rose. His fingers followed the scar below his eye where it split into two main branches and a dozen interlacing twigs. Puc, Von, Thevy, Ung, Duch were all dead. Rath, Sol and No had control of the remnant of the 91st. Nang didn’t know where he was going. Nor why. All he’d been told was “Trust Angkar.”

The Americans had been legislated out of action yet the offensive had not rolled forward. Indeed, it had sputtered worse than under the bombings. Nang did not know, was never to know, that air strikes had killed perhaps half, perhaps more than half, of the attacking KK yotheas, their conscripted porters and their militia aides. The cessation of bombing had coincided with the destruction of the Northern Zone Army and the crippling of those of the South and Southwestern Zones. Only the Gray Vultures of the Eastern Zone were able to pursue the battle, and they were now smashing FANK’s defensive ring about Kompong Cham.

They walked north for another week. Each day new reports reached the column. The yuons had attempted to assassinate the high generals of the Center, not once, not twice, but three times. Each time loyal yotheas had sacrificed their lives protecting the leadership of the Kampuchean revolution. The battle for Kompong Cham soured. Lon Nol had decided, with the relief of Phnom Penh, to commit totally to the salvation of that Mekong River city. On 18 August FANK reinforcements from the heartland reached Kompong Cham. Then FANK’s 80th and 50th Brigades caught a poorly commanded, poorly controlled Krahom force in a hammer-and-anvil operation, annihilating most of the yotheas, the stragglers fleeing to take refuge in the university and monastery of Angkor Wat—structures which the Cambodian air force would not bomb. More reinforcements arrived—twenty, naval convoys—and Kompong Cham was recaptured by FANK. Seventy percent of the city was in ruins. Still the Center claimed partial victory. The civilian administration had been wiped out and the Khmer Krahom had evacuated twenty to thirty thousand regained people.

North of Kompong Thom, Nang’s column crossed paths with the transportation and security companies escorting the Center. The next two hours changed the direction of Nang’s life.

“Eh?” Met Reth said quizzically, looking at the line of wounded. “That one you say?” Met Sar’s bodyguard had been sent for Nang, sent to bring him to Sar for debriefing and reinspiration. “I don’t see him.”

“The one with the pink scar through his left eye, there,” the porter said.

Met Sar smiled very wide when Nang arrived but after the first moment, Sar did not look at him. “We,” Sar lamented, “have suffered greater than any revolutionary army ever! Look at you.” Nang shuffled uncomfortably. A moment before he’d arrived he’d imagined Sar would hug him, would hold him and praise him for his hard work. “Two hundred days of bombings,” Sar went on. “Two hundred nights without interruption. No other nation has suffered so under the thumb of American imperialism. Only we. And only our superhuman will has enabled us to survive. Aah, look at you. You’re still alive, eh? A symbol of defeat! Go. Go away. Perhaps Met Sen has something for you. I won’t look at you again.”

The sense of abandonment was immediate. Reth led Nang out. Total confusion flooded the boy’s mind. Yet immediately he was before Met Sen and Met Sen was hugging him and comforting him.

“You never had a chance,” Sen said in his wispy voice, “to loot that capital. Ah, too bad,” he said. “Never a chance to play city folk. You will yet. I promise you, Met Nang.” Sen looked deeply into Nang’s destroyed face. “There are special privileges for a man of your record,” he said. “So come with me. Work in security with me, Met Nang of Kampuchea. We are far from finished. So Sar broods about Kompong Cham? So what? He’ll get over it and the imperialists and the lackeys will always neak-luong themselves. If you help me, I’ll take care of you. Come with me into the secret zone. Security—this is where the true power is.”

The next eighteen months for Nang, for Chhuon, for Vathana were extensions of the descending spiral which was dropping Cambodia into the worst horrors of human history.

Throughout the American spring and summer of 1973 revelations by Watergate investigators had accumulated and multiplied. Wiretaps, ordered to plug the leaks which had spilled the news about the secret 1969 Cambodia bombings, were exposed, as were the “plumbers’ ” break-ins. Each new report spurred bigger headlines and deeper searches. The Nixon administration shelved its dubious policies and plans for Southeast Asia and entrenched for the coming domestic battle.

The Krahom also entrenched, jerking along in sporadic fits of minor offensives, terrorist acts and withdrawals. By the time of the legislated halt of American bombing (15 August 1973), half the Khmer Rouge attacking force had been killed. The Krahom, and FANK too, recoiled from the long campaign. The Krahom Army of the North lay low and licked its wounds much as the NVA had after the 1972 Easter offensive in South Viet Nam. For the rest of the year the Krahom rebuilt and reequipped their battalions, and they stockpiled materiel for the final battle. In addition to their military losses, the Krahom suffered significant political setbacks, both with the population under their control and with their “allies.” American intelligence reports concluded:

The most significant development during the past quarter was the increasing disaffection of large segments of the population with KC [Khmer Communist] control. Reports from the countryside in all six KC regions reveal a rather widespread failure of the Communists to enlist the support of the villages under their control, as well as a general inability to recruit desirable persons into their organization. The openness with which the population has voiced its displeasure varies widely including several areas where dissenters have begun to band together and demonstrate publicly, despite a relatively strong KC presence. [
The Situation in Cambodia
, October 1973 (CIA report number 7881/73,)]

For the Krahom the situation further deteriorated in November 1973. On the 6th, Communist rank and file troops in Kampong Trach District openly revolted against the local Krahom leadership; in the ensuing firelight Rumdoah soldiers succeeded in stopping Krahom yotheas from forcing the evacuation and relocation of the “liberated” population. Two weeks later in Kampot Province peasants and Rumdoah troops, armed with scythes, machetes and rice knives, drove off a KK force that had come to collectivize and confiscate the local harvest. The villagers were doubly incensed by yothea denunciations of Norodom Sihanouk. Along the Viet Nam border the NVA continued its massive, unopposed buildup. Hanoi, viewing the exhaustion of the Cambodian factions, both KK and FANK, judged it had gained at least a year along its western front. In secret negotiations with Krahom leaders, the Hanoi Politburo thus agreed to keep its forces out of the Cambodian interior in exchange for a Krahom promise to end the purge against Khmer Viet Minh and Rumdoah cadre. In the enclaves of the interior, Ith Sarin’s
Regrets for the Khmer Soul
peaked in popularity. Its descriptions, along with those of a growing number of escapees from the “liberated” zones, of Krahom evacuations, “pure flame” policies, ruthlessness, and even growing Rumdoah totalitarianism, foretold virtually all the horrors that were to come. The Lon Nol regime, believing the book was Communist propaganda, dismissed the revelations. The Krahom leadership, however, was incensed. Security in the liberated areas was tightened. Krahom security chief Met Sen, along with zonal security officers, set out to establish high-level reeducation facilities in the “secret zones” for “students” requiring extensive and long-term classes on how to live in a pure society.