For the Sake of All Living Things (121 page)

He stared at a boulder beside the trail. The front of the column began to move. His eyes searched the rock. Tell me, old one, he asked the rock spirit, tell me what to do. You are very old, you have been here for a very long time. Tell me, old one. A man lasts but half a century. You have endured a thousand centuries. Your spirit must know. Tell me.

“Move!” A yothea smacked the small of Chhuon’s back with his rifle butt. Chhuon’s abdomen snapped forward, his head jerked back, his feet stuck in the gravel. As he fell his arms snapped sideways. He forced his hands back, took the force of the fall on his face. Still the thread broke. Immediately three yotheas leaped on him, cussing, kicking, beating him with rifle butts. On his side he curled into a fetal position, his arms over his head. “You’ve blinded her! You son of a bitch, you’ve blinded her!” Again and again they screamed. One jerked his head up forcing him to watch as others clamped a frail and frightened young girl before him.

“No! Please! No!” A shriek. The girl’s mother from a step above. “Do mine!”

“You’ve blinded that girl,” a yothea spit, kicked Chhuon’s ribs, held his face up. Chhuon saw another yothea jab the girl’s eye with a bamboo stiletto, jab it just deep enough to collapse the eyeball. The mother leaped on the yotheas and they beat her. Then others grabbed the man who’d been above her and stabbed his eye. Somehow he managed to bear the pain without breaking his thread. The yotheas retied the mother and Chhuon. They allowed the girl to walk holding her face.

For Nang each day now became a chore, each chore a punishment. Each punishment he feared yet he bore them in silence, bore them, hating them, hating every element, every man, woman and child, yet cloaking hate, self-hate and feat in terms of wonderment and progress, in febrile enthusiasm, in praise of his
kang chrops
, his child-spies, in glowing reports of progress in the paddies and at the elimination sites. Every tenth day he filed a report for the Center. Every tenth day he boasted of the number of joyful workers toiling his lands, of the number of traitors he’d exposed, of the number of spies and useless elements he’d eliminated for others, of the confessions he’d obtained and the networks he’d exposed. And he bragged.
His
units were by far the best.
His
crops the densest,
his
slaves the most loyal,
his
zone the purest,
his
future the brightest. He basked in his righteous vengeance. His chest billowed when he thought of the difficulties he’d overcome, the enemies he’d beaten. But the satisfaction was shallow, fleeting, and in its void was the chore, the fear, and the hate.

Met Ku found him at home late afternoon on the day Chhuon was photographed. Ku reported the statistics and the two young men along with Met Arn chatted and ate heartily as they discussed the report for the next period. Finally Ku said as he scooped some hot curried rice from the serving dish to his bowl, “You remember that old peasant, the one who did the irrigation drawings?” Nang looked at Ku, then Arn. He shook his head. “The one you took to the border on ambush so he would tell the others and...”

“Yes.” Nang said it without conviction.

“He’s confessed,” Ku said. “I brought his file.”

“Eliminate him,” Nang said. He plucked three thin skewered slices of spiced, smoked meat from a platter.

“His file’s very interesting. Very complete.” Ku looked at Arn, and Arn nodded confirmation. “Shall I leave it?”

Nang did not ponder. “Why?”

“For you to read. It’s a shame to have shown him so much then not let him go back and tell the others. The stories help keep the people in line.”

“Aahggh!” Nang pulled a bamboo skewer from his mouth. “It only makes them more rebellious. All we do for them, and they are ingrates.” Nang threw the skewer. Harshly he rasped, “All Angkar provides...I hate them. I hate them all. They’ve earned their merit. They’re getting the reward for such evil. Enemies must be utterly crushed. What’s rotten must be excised.” Nang sprang up. “Where’s the file?”

“It’s with...”

“Never mind. I can’t read their lies. Their shit. Take me to that evil
phnong.
I’ll see him.”

The little dry season was upon the land. Days were intolerably hot and humid, evenings we’re no relief. Not until long after the sun descended, when the ground mist formed, was there some respite. Chhuon lay on his side in a concrete cell amid the rows of low cells atop the ledge of the lower cliff. Each small box held eight to ten people, people crammed onto one another so tightly they took turns inhaling. The air was putrid. A moaning came from the canyon like a wind from the underworld. Radio Phnom Penh, the Voice of Democratic Kampuchea, resounded off cell walls but was not enough to mask the gasping spirits of the chasm which filled the night wind for miles, which reverberated in the canyon like a low guitar string plucked within the sound box, vibrating the ground as if to shake the stones of the cliff loose, threatening an avalanche, tumbling and burying the misery below. All day the sounds had been punctuated with shrieks, screams, pleas, cries and the laughter of the yotheas. “When it’s dark,” Chhuon’s cellmates whispered to one another, “when the Thais can’t see, they’ll send us up the last escarpment. I overheard them. All we have to do is not anger them.” “But what’s the yelling?” “Rape,” Chhuon whispered. No one listened. The old one had been the only one to stumble on the climb. He’d caused them to blind the girl and the man.

Unseen, the soldiers indeed raped a few women, but the screams came not from that but from their games. Those with one eye blinded were taken for “treatment.” There the right eye was poked, popped. Then they were brought, wrists lashed with wire, to the edge of the cliff. The soldiers spun them three or four times then left them to wander, jeering if they stumbled away from the edge, bashing them if they froze or fell to hug the ground. “Get up! Get up! Run!” One by one they found the edge, fell, bouncing off outcroppings, suffering mutilation and eventual death, landing on those still alive and those dead. Moaning in mass pain.

At midnight a generator came to life and added its drone to the noises on the ledge. In the darkness house lights glowed, seemingly an entire electrified village. On the ledge yotheas dimly lit the aisles between the cells with small torches.

“Bring the old one first.” Nang snapped the order and the yothea squad jumped. Nang cursed them for being slow. When Chhuon was brought forth Nang addressed him. “Old Man,” Nang lied, “this evening I read your confession.”

“Yes,” Chhuon mumbled.

“Are you sorry for the horrible atrocities you’ve brought upon the Khmer people?”

Chhuon did not answer. In the darkness and mist he was disoriented. Then he blurted, “What are those lights?”

“Come closer.” Nang held a hand out to Chhuon. “You’re too far back to make it out clearly.” Chhuon hesitated. “Come,” Nang urged. “Walk with me. When we’re a little closer your eyes won’t deceive you.” Still Chhuon hesitated. “That’s the way to Thailand, Old Man. You’re being expelled. Remember?”

“I’ve been here before,” Chhuon said clearly. “Remember? I know the cable over the canyon.”

“Oh. Ha!” Nang laughed lightly. Gently he took Chhuon’s hand in his right pincer. “Let me explain what you see. And I will walk ahead. When you’re in Thailand don’t speak badly of us. Come.”

Quietly Chhuon said, “I shall become enlightened...” He too laughed lightly. Nang’s mangled hand was warm and small and it reminded Chhuon of his son’s hand when the boy was six or seven. “...May...may I say good-bye to you?”

Now Nang hesitated. Not a single victim had ever asked that. “Perhaps you’ll rejoin us when you realize how terrible the imperialists are.”

“It’s okay. I know. You know I know. Don’t pretend. I had a son who would be your age. Eight years ago he was taken from me in the mountains. Every night I’ve prayed for him. I heard he’d survived. Become part of the resistance. How I wish to live to see him. He was a good boy and I loved him so.” Chhuon began to cry. “When they stole him my heart broke. I only wished to see him once more. To say good-bye. Let me say good-bye to you.”

Nang did not answer. He walked the old man slowly toward the lights, which appeared to be a village in the distance. Somehow this repulsive creature with his gentle words had caused him to choke up. He cleared his throat. “I wish,” he uttered quietly, “you were not an enemy of Kampuchea. Good-bye.”

With that Chhuon vanished from sight.

All night human beings were taken from the cells and told to “walk to the light.” Many screamed as they fell but, as had happened every night since the site had become operational, not one refused to go.

Nang did not stay past the first dozen. The cliff no longer thrilled him as it once had. Instead he returned to his home. He attempted to sleep but could not. The moaning from the gorge seemed particularly loud, as if the voices were trapped in by the low clouds and mist. He arose. Turned on the radio. There was no broadcast from Phnom Penh. He refused to tune in Hanoi. Nang cleaned himself. He checked his closet for his best uniform and changed clothes. Then he went to the central room where he had collected a number of books, but he could not read. Instead he hefted the file of the old peasant. Nang sat, looked at the photos, began to read. The last confession was stilted, the work of coercion. Nang read only the beginning, then he read the start of an earlier version. Then he put them aside and lifted the spiral notebooks labeled #1 and #7. He flipped through the last. This creature surely was a spy, an agent of the Americans. Freely he’d written accounts of secret meetings, of aiding escapees. Why he’d not been dealt the ultimate measure earlier Nang didn’t know but he suspected collusion and bribery involving the cadre of Sangkat 117, the old man’s last site, perhaps even involving Arn or Ku.

Nang put notebook #7 down. He sighed, rolled forward in his chair, was about to return to bed. But his hand opened notebook #1. Immediately it grabbed him. Nang read quickly, reread carefully. He knew some of the people...this was the story of the trip to Stung Treng, Lomphat and Plei Srepok. Nang closed the book. His abdomen and chest burned. He swallowed hard to keep the bile down but immediately belched the hot acid to the back of his throat. He closed his eyes. Into his memory leaped a vision of a giant. He opened his eyes. Looked about. “My father was Kambu,” he said aloud. “The other father is dead. Kambu. Kambu. He is the father of all.”

Again Nang opened the notebook. Again he read. Again he shut the pages and closed his eyes. The written words jarred loose all sorts of memories. Again the giant, now surrounded by total village immolation. “Yiii...” the giant screams. “For all eternity our blood will call for revenge.” Whose words? “Watch over Mayana.” Who speaks to me? “Yiii-KA!” The head, the neck split clean. Ears scraping naked body. “
I
—” Nang bolted up, erect, rigid, yelling,
“I am the giant!”

“Huh?” Nang sees himself standing. He looks around. Met Nem, the house teacher, and Met Kosal, his bodyguard, have rushed to the room. “I must go.” Nang barks the order at himself. He is feverish, frantic. He runs. Kosal runs with him, follows him to the path to the cliff. Nang is sprinting at a pace Kosal can’t match. He reaches the fork of the path but takes neither way. Instead he bears left and crashes through the undergrowth. In the canyon along the base of the cliff he passes a set of stone stairs, then a three-tiered wall, then a large bust of Buddha. The three-tiered wall curves with the cliff base and in the apex there is a shrine. Splattered thickly over the shrine are the dead, the mutilated dying—thousands. Nang climbs the pile at the base of the lowest tier. He is certain he will not be there. Millions of flies swarm. First light has broken. The illumination is soft on the oily dripping pools of yellow, brown, red swirls, massive pockets of maggots. Black birds descend with the dawning. They pick at the carnage, the decomposing, the disfigured. Nang waddles maniacally into the depths of the offal, “papa? Papa?” He sloshes to the center and climbs the second tier. No stone can be seen beneath the body dump. “Papa!” Nang pulls through bodies of children, flipping them to the lowest level. As he grasps, one screams. The shriek amid the constant hum of flies and the thunderous groaning horrifies him. He lurches back, stumbles, falls cascading backward to the bottom. Again he climbs, to the first, the second, now to the third tier. “Papa! Papa, you didn’t abandon me. I thought you left me. They lied. They lied to me. I thought you died. I thought you hated me. Papa!” Nang lifts face after face. Where? Where could the old peasant be? “Papa! Papa, I was such a disappointment to you. But...you...you didn’t leave me.” Oh...oh...oh, Lord Buddha, help me, help me find him. “Papa!” Nang is crying, frantic, distraught. “I tried to become all you could want...to become everything I could. I too will be enlightened. For your sake. Papa, please help me.” Nang drooped, plopped down amid the corpses. “You,” he said sadly to one. “Have you seen my father?” Then he looked up. The upper rim of the cliff looked to be a thousand kilometers high. “Papa! I’m so frightened...everything around me...there are ghosts everywhere.”

Nang rolled to his knees. He crawled along the top tier, crying, blithering, unable to see through the clouds of insects he’d stirred up. Then he saw the face. The eyes were opened. It was not broken. The body too appeared intact. But it was without life. Nang moved to Chhuon. He sat the old body up, leaned it against other corpses, then sat next to it, lifted its arm and put it over his own shoulder. “Papa, what should I do? Should I have my children spy on one another, eliminate one another? Look at that child there. She didn’t deserve to live. What of your life these eight years? Would it have been better to die at Plei Srepok? Look, Papa! Look at them all.
I am the giant now!
They were his enemies. These people, they’re not enemies of the state!” Nang righted a head with his left foot. “You, old woman, did you love your children? This man”—Nang hugged his father—“he loved me.”

From high above, the radio, the Voice of Democratic Kampuchea, turned to top volume, blasted urgent words. Yotheas scurried. Nang looked up. Amid the buzzing and moaning he could not at first make out the distant words. Then distinctly he heard the message. “Two Viet Namese divisions,” the voice blared, “are advancing west along Highway 19 through the highlands of Ratanakiri. Soldiers of the Northeast Zone...”