For the Sake of All Living Things (115 page)

“mama,” Su Livanh whispered.

“You can talk, eh?” Kpa said quietly. Su Livanh stared at the red-brown man. She tried to squirm back into her mother’s nest. “Don’t be afraid.” Kpa squatted by the edge of the platform, gently extended a hand and rubbed the back of Su Livanh’s arm. “What’s your name?” Su Livanh dug her heels in and pushed harder against Vathana. Vathana’s curl eased. Again she gasped. “Bring some water,” Kpa said to the other man.

“ba, ba ba ba.” Samnang sat on the platform beside his sister.

“Ba ba,” Kpa said gently. “Who is this?” He tapped Su Livanh.

Su Livanh looked at the man squatting before her. “Su Livanh,” she answered in a sweet little-girl voice. “We went to see Grandpa Cahuom but he was gone.”

“Cahuom? Cahuom Chhuon?”

“Grandpa.” Su Livanh shuddered and again squirmed against her mother.

“my baby,” Vathana mumbled in delirium, “samol.” Her voice was very weak.

For weeks Kpa and the other two men nursed Vathana, fed and sheltered the children. They spoke little, almost no words at all, a habit they’d fallen into in their hiding. The children responded well but Vathana remained weak and withdrawn. She refused to eat. Slowly the men forced her to swallow, first just water, then soup, then rice; a little more each day. All day, all night, when conscious, she cried though she had no tears. The man with malaria spoke softly to her. She remained withdrawn. He sang childhood songs to her. She was impassive. When she slipped into subconsciousness she moaned for Samol.

“Who is Samol?” the malarial man asked Su Livanh.

“My sister,” the little girl answered, using the form meaning elder sister.

“Where is she?”

“The witch ate her. Mama says the blind witch ate her.”

More weeks passed. Then came the little dry season. Heat and humidity were intolerable. Then the clouds broke with fierce monsoon rains. Vathana sat up. She hung her legs off the platform, placed her feet on the ground. Slowly she rocked to and fro humming the tune to a childhood song, rhythmically rocking, staring at the steady dripping from the palm-frond eave, staring as if her eye sockets were empty, her mind disgorged.

“You are my niece,” said the man who suffered from malaria. “I sang that song to you when you were your daughter’s age.” Vathana stopped humming, stopped rocking. She leaned against the man. He put his arm around her, rocked gently, hummed. He fell silent. Then he said, “I wanted them all to stay. We were a strong force but when the village was liberated they rushed to join the new force. Some were marched west with the villagers. We found most of them in a grave on the trail to Phum Sath Nan. How I wanted to see your father. And your mother and Aunt Sita—your grandmother. I would have given up the resistance but Kpa knew. He saw into their hearts. Still we can’t stay much longer. When the rains stop and all the people and their yotheas are consumed with the harvest, then we’ll go out. Then we’ll go to Thailand.”

The rains continued to intensify throughout September. Foraging became more difficult. Food stores disappeared. Samnang roamed far and wide, alone. He alone seemed to thrive. Sam’s recurring bouts with malaria weakened him and he spent the time between bouts fearing the next onset. Su Livanh, though she ate as much as the others, became more and more lethargic. Under her flesh she seemed to be melting away. Nothing she did caught her mother’s attention.

On a wet evening in early October, after the three men had remapped and replanned the escape across the Mekong and west and north toward Preah Vihear and up the escarpment to the Thai border, the one-armed man sat with Vathana. “Can’t you hug your child?” he asked her. His Khmer was poor. He dropped his eyes, embarrassed by the deficiency. “Can’t you...” He repeated the question in French.

Vathana turned. She glared at him. Then for the first time in one hundred days she spoke. “Where’s your other arm?” Her voice was accusing, in French, flat.

“The Communists took it,” he answered in Viet Namese.

“You are yuon.”

“Viet Namese. Call me Le.” He switched back to French.

“Thmil.”

“No.”

“Lon Nol warned
thmils
would bring a dark age. Would bring an age where the ignorants would rule the educated and Buddha would be chased from the land; where only deaf-mutes would survive.”

“Yes, I remember. His prophecy holds true for my country as well.”

Vathana’s glare widened. She leaned away from him. The stub of his left arm involuntarily jumped. “What country?” Vathana’s tone remained flat.

“South Viet Nam,” he said proudly. “My country. My people. They are not the
thmils.
”

“Why aren’t you there?”

“I escaped.”

“Escaped?”

“The Communists, they’re your
thmils.
In my country too they’ve ushered in a dark age. They took my arm in 1972. I was captured but released when the Khmer Rouge attacked the NVA base. I think they meant to kill me but your uncle’s men assisted me to ARVN lines.” Vathana stared uncomprehendingly. It was the first time she’d spoken. Le was afraid if he stopped she’d slip back into her remote void. He talked on. “I was medically discharged but even so...when...they put me in the Ka Tum Reeducation Camp west of An Loc. Then they told me, because I was an intelligence officer, I should go to Nghe Tinh, to Reeducation Camp Number 6 in Tanh Phnong, very very far north. I was sure they meant to kill me so I escaped and ran for days. West of Ban Me Thuot I jumped into the Krong River and I floated downstream until it became the Srepok and then I followed the river until I recognized the peak by the old NVA camp. Then your Uncle Sam found me again. Only he and Kpa remain from their...”

“You must take my children to Thailand.”

“Uh...yes. Of course. We’re all going.”

“I will die here...The children, they are yours now.” At that Vathana turned from Tran Van Le. She pulled her legs back up to the platform with her hands, fell to her side, curled and slept. As she did, in her mind, an old prayer unfolded.

From great suffering comes great insight. From great insight comes great compassion. From great compassion comes a peaceful heart. From a peaceful heart comes a peaceful family. From a peaceful family comes a peaceful community. From a peaceful community comes a peaceful nation. From a peaceful nation comes a peaceful world.

The rains slowed. The winds shifted. The rains stopped. Kpa led the tiny column away from the camp toward the swollen stream and to the bamboo-and-vine suspension bridge. Each day in the month and a half since Tran Van Le had broken through to Vathana, he, Kpa and Sam had forced her to listen, to talk, to eat and to walk. Each day, though her health was fragile, she became a little stronger. Each night they told her their dream of Thailand. Each night she too dreamed. Each dream ended with her in Kampuchea and the children in Bangkok. Vathana was happy, happy as the day she raised the first medical tent for the refugees fleeing the border war, happy as the day Samol was born. She believed the dream.

Su Livanh, too, recouped much of her lost spirit. The lilt returned to her voice; flaccid muscle turned taut. Kpa and Samnang became almost inseparable, a hunting-foraging team able to supply the tiny unit with enough food if not to thrive, at least to heal and regain some weight. Only Sam remained weak. The malarial bouts which should have tempered remained a nagging constant, dragging him closer and closer to despair.

The bridge was intact but weather worn and flimsy. They spent an entire day laboring in its repair. Then they crossed it and camped. The trails had not been used since they’d come to the camp in July. In five months the jungle had nearly obliterated the trails and the going was painfully slow. What once had taken the best part of a day to traverse now took a week. Again food was scarce. Where for five years Vathana had viewed her scant diet as a religious precept or as an exercise in self-denial and self-control, now she saw it as starvation. It weakened and depressed her. She fought to move on. Her mind and body, so fragile, slowed. Her soul filled with dejection. Kpa pushed her. Le prodded. Samnang, bursting anew upon adventure, tugged her. Day by day they moved closer to the main road. Now Vathana wanted to burst from the jungle, to run, to scream, to surrender. Kpa forced a halt. Vathana seethed, mad, claustrophobic. Le restrained her. Sam held her. “Not now. Not now. Not until we know. Tomorrow.”

“You will see my children reach Thailand.”

“Yes. All of us.”

“I must go.”

“No.”

Before dawn Kpa and Le crept from the night camp toward the roadway. In July there had been no villages in the area, yet now they sensed many inhabitants. Inhabitants would mean soldiers, guards. They proceeded cautiously. They stayed in the trees, moved slowly from concealment to concealment until they could distinguish the sounds of voices. They stopped. They moved parallel to the road to a clearing through which they saw the multitudes—thousands upon thousands of filthy emaciated wraiths in tattered black cloth dragging their unshod feet, limping forth, dazed. At the roadside, in view of the nearly unconscious parade, a dozen yotheas were gang-raping a young woman. Then they dug a hole and buried her to the neck, then they beat her head with clubs until she was dead. Not finished, two boys hacked at her neck with bayonets until they severed the head from the body. Then they put the head on a stake and planted it so the smashed face would greet the oncoming procession. They laughed and ran off, moving against the flow, knocking people down until they found another young woman whom they pulled from the roadway.

Kpa and Le turned back. Again they moved through the forest parallel to the road. All morning they traveled west. At varying intervals they reconnoitered the road. The procession was broken into units but the units seemed endless. By night they returned to find Vathana stir-crazy, Sam yet more anemic. They attempted to reason with both, to explain their sightings, their new plan to remain in the forest slowly moving west. Kpa was able to get nods only when he ordered, “Follow me.”

Day fell to night, night rose to day, seemingly without end. One day they moved three kilometers, one day only a half. Always they were quiet. Snakes fell from the trees and frightened them. Spiders crawled over them at night. Ticks buried their heads into their flesh and leeches sucked precious moisture from their bodies. On and on. Wherever they approached roadways they spied starving processions. They crossed the Mekong south of Stung Treng by bribing a government ferryman who responded to every query, “Take care of your mouth, Brother,” or “Don’t talk of tigers, Sister, where tigers can overhear.” Then they came to an area of unharvested golden paddies shimmering in the gentle December wind. Again they slowed, established a camp in a treeline. At night they crept into the fields, rasped their fingers over the grains, filling bags. By day they husked, separated and dried—cooking and eating half, saving half for the next phase.

In areas where few people had lived they’d seen multitudes. Now in areas of once dense habitation they saw no one. Vathana was heedless, indifferent. Kpa became disoriented on the flat plain. Sam remained weak. Le became lax. Only Samnang’s natural visual vigilance and Su Livanh’s fear of sounds remained intact.

With full rice bags they stepped onto the open empty road. Suddenly there were shots. Kpa’s hip erupted red. More shots. Le scooped Su Livanh in his arms, sprinted. Vathana froze, trembled. She turned, looked back. A hundred meters away a herd of young yotheas were stampeding down upon them. Samnang grabbed Sam. They fled toward scattered palms along the roadside. Vathana dropped her bag, knelt by Kpa. Rice splattered in the dirt.

“Go!” he screamed.
“Go!”

She grasped his shoulders with her frail hands. “Please,” she pleaded weakly.

Kpa struggled. He sat forward, up. Vathana pulled. She looked up. Le, Sam and the children were gone. More shots. Kpa rolled to the knee on his good side, Vathana wedged her hands in his armpits, pushed up. As she held him above her two more shots, very close, exploded. Kpa’s face shattered. For a second he stood, to her weightless. Then he collapsed into her.

For two hours the yotheas raped her. Whatever purity the Krahom had claimed before victory was mocked in this taking of the spoils of war. “This is Angkar’s rice, eh, Met Trollop? Angkar must be paid. Pay me. Pay my brothers.” Again and again. Bang, bang bang—next. Bang, bang bang—next. Rough, crude, cruel. Not concerned with their own pleasures—strictly hate, conquest, control, humiliation. Then beating and interrogation and more beating and then a second day of rape and beating and perhaps a third or a fourth but at that point Vathana did not think of time. “Please,” she begged. “Please, let me die. Let death release me.” Still she feared death at their hands. She feared they’d dig her grave, bury her to the neck, then bludgeon her. And she feared the decapitation. What pain does the human spirit feel when the head is rammed upon a stake and hoisted, used even in death to terrorize other slaves?

They did not kill her but left her to die. Someone helped her. She did not know who. In mid-December she was given to a newly relocated phum. No one knew her. The
mekong
in charge threw her out. “You can’t stay here,” the
mekong
snapped angrily. “What’s your village? Where’s your family?” Vathana was forced to the road, alone, without food, without water, without shelter, without passes. For two weeks she wandered through the new wilderness zone begging for food at each settlement, sucking water from clawed hard dirt clumps at the bottom of dried puddles.

Then, “Phum Sath Din, eh, Sister? Those people are in Sangkat 117. That’s where you must go. Here. Take these mangoes. And this. I’m sorry we have so little to give. In the old days...”

Then, “You will live with me. How did you get here?”

Vathana could barely answer.

“Who is she?” demanded Met Nem, a
mekong
of Sangkat 117.

“She is my daughter,” the woman answered.

“Met Voen, if this is a lie, you’ll be sent to Site 169.”

“I tell you, she is my daughter. She is very ill. Let me treat her. She’ll become strong and will struggle hard for Angka’s glory.”