For the Sake of All Living Things (21 page)

Then everything changed.

“Madam, I must speak to your husband.” It was the barge captain. He had come to their apartment house shouting the name Pech Chieu Teck loudly dozens of times until he was directed to the fourth floor, then down the hallway. He banged on the door, once, and barged in. “It’s very urgent,” he said in French.

“He’s not here,” Vathana responded, also in French.

“He must be!” The captain threw his arms in the air, looked up and down, into the doorways to the other rooms, arms flailing as if he could turn over the entire room and check under each object and thus produce the man he desired to see.

“He’s not here,” Vathana repeated. “He’s...” She hesitated. “...dancing.”

“Dancing? Dancing!” The captain exploded. He smacked a fist into an open palm. “The river burns and he’s dancing!?”

“Please.” Vathana’s hands swayed gracefully toward a chair. “I can help. Tea? Have you had rice today?”

The captain sat momentarily, then sprang up and paced as Vathana brought out rice, tea, a plate of pickled fish. “We must arm the crew,” the captain said, his arms flying in exasperation.

“Now,” Vathana said calmly, “you will tell me all.”

“The water’s low this time of year,” the captain said as if explaining to a child. “The river’s not so wide. They attack us more easily.”

“Who?”

“Who? Who knows? Bandits!” he shouted. “This morning, not twenty-five kilometers from here they rose up out of the swamps west of the channel. You know Phum Sambour? Just below. Where the river’s very narrow. They wounded two crewmen. Good men.”

“I beg you”—Vathana showed deep concern—“tell me how you run the barge.”

“Madam, come with me. I’ll show you.”

For an hour the captain explained the incidents on the river as he and Vathana walked the deck, inspected the sandbagged wheelhouse, the hold and the damage caused by the rocket-propelled grenade which had wounded the men. For two hours he explained the operations of the barge, and of the tugs which were required at the ports. He showed her channel charts and explained why they had to hug one shore here, the other there. Then he resuggested armament.

“And the army?” Vathana asked.

“Useless.” The riverman shook his head. “Across the border the ARVN river patrols come. Here, we radio the Royals and we must negotiate payment before they come. Madam,” he said, “we must arm.”

Vathana turned away, looked down the river. For the first time she felt she had some understanding of the business her husband failed to direct, felt she might have a reason to be in Neak Luong. Could she direct the business? She turned back, fixed the captain with her stare. Her stomach tightened. She had no breath to speak. Yes, she thought, I can. I can. “Do what you must”—she gasped, she gulped air, blurted: “to arm the men.”

The captain locked his eyes on her. His stare was savage, challenging. Vathana stared back. “I want to know everything that concerns this vessel,” she said firmly. “Where you go, when, the crew, exactly what you buy, what you fire off.” She inhaled deeply. With her assertion came an unexpected calm. “Fight only to defend yourselves,” she said. “We’re a merchant company, not an army.”

Though Nang and Eng traveled with fellow Communists, they were outsiders. Their training, their age, their feeling of racial superiority alienated them. The Viet Namese were five to forty years older. Nang and Eng were but twelve. For Nang there was no trust, no solidarity with yuons. At times he spied Mountaineers, some soldiers but mostly coolies. With them he felt a kinship yet he did not approach. Amongst them he looked for the giant.

Nang, Eng, and Binh became a cell. Comrade Binh was Viet Namese, a lame, combatant of the People’s Army of Viet Nam (PAVN). He was their guide, their authorization to be on the trail. He made no attempt to be their friend. Nang was not sure where Binh was leading them; he had been told only that it was toward a camp at which Bok Roh trained others, a camp of international training. For thirty-four days they walked north, rode north, at times during the day, mostly at night. Each day Nang felt the removal from Kampuchea more deeply; each night he questioned this disruption of his mission.

The land changed drastically. For a time they traveled in steep mountains, for a time over relatively flat plateau. At one point the mountain paths were so steep that in a week they covered no more than thirty kilometers. It became cold, colder than Nang had ever known. The dry season was under way in Cambodia but here rains continued. Binh called them mountain rains. Most of the traffic they saw was heading south. To Nang, the vision of thousands of soldiers, with thousands of bicycles and thousands of heavy trucks, more vehicles than he’d seen in his entire life, was intimidating. Gone was the security of Cambodia. Every night planes bombed or strafed distant sections of the trail; uncanny, Nang heard porters say, in their accuracy. Each night the planes destroyed huge amounts of materiel and many vehicles. Some soldiers were killed, some wounded, but personnel trails were separate from truck routes and only truck routes were bombed.

To have that power, Nang thought. Yet it’s like trying to stop the flow of a river by tossing boulders into the current. They alter the course, even back the stream into pools, but eventually the water leaks through and flows on. Still, he thought, still...

Each night, antecedent to bombing, flares popped and lit the roadway. Invariably, second flares and second bombing waves followed. Nang came to enjoy the noise on the parallel trails. When the flares came he would sit, his arms squeezed tightly to his sides, his fists at his lowered chin, and he would wonder about the power. Then one night, in the last flat light before the second wave of explosions, Nang witnessed the severity of damage inflicted by bomb shrapnel on yuon torsos. The sight struck him. All that night he thought about the power, the ability to kill from such a great distance.

By the twenty-third day they had moved north of the bombing grids. There they rendezvoused with other pairs of Khmer boys, each escorted by a PAVN soldier. For five days they marched, their column ever increasing. Then, with hundreds of others, they were trucked out of the mountains, into beautiful tropical hills, and deposited at an immense training camp where armored vehicles, tanks, cannons and AA guns were in abundance.

China, Nang thought. China!

“Someone is bombing,” Vathana said in French. They spoke only French in the apartment. “Also, I must tell you...”

“To you, always there is a crisis,” Teck retorted. He looked at his wife with disgust, the same look his father gave his mother when they argued.

“Eh...” Her primary thought had been of personal news yet his words made her defensive. “Why can’t it be true?” she said. “Does the captain lie?”

“Did he see them bomb?” Teck’s voice was harsh. Ever since the betrothal he had been seething inside—angry with his father for attaching him to this peasant girl, angry with his culture for demanding obedience, compliance to the wishes of the elders, angry with himself for not being able to say he wanted more, wanted to go to Paris, to find an educated woman, to lead his own life as he pictured a French son would. “No!” he shouted. “Did any of the crew see bombings? No! I tell you if the South Viet Namese bombed as you say, Samdech Sihanouk would have been on the radio for five hours.”

“Maybe he refuses to believe it. It could be...”

“It could be nothing.” Teck stood, tense. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone,” he yelled at her. “We were paid. We had a good captain. You order guns for them. You tell them when and where to load, to unload?! You and that damn monk. What does he know?”

“They’ve no reason to report untruths,” Vathana said bitterly. “No reason.” She reached to her chest, pulled out the statuette of Buddha carved from her grandfather’s tooth that her father had given her the last day of the wedding ceremony. “The crew brought six children and their mother upriver. She said she was there. She said the ground trembled and many bombs tore the jungle where the Viet Namese had their camp. You could have talked to them. No, you have to dance.”

“Stay out of this business. Why can’t you believe like your father?”

“My father!?” Vathana caressed the statuette.

“My father says your father told him, ‘War is for politicians. Not for us.’ I believe that.”

Vathana stared at her husband. He had never spoken so harshly to her, had never shown such emotion. She wanted him to talk but now she wanted to win the argument. “Two crewmen refuse to cross the border, refuse to even travel near the border. What politician will convince them to go?”

“You want to run the company?” Teck snapped the words. He spun, walked toward the door. Spun, strode back. “Let me do it. To hell with those two. Get a new crew. I’m going out.”

“Out?” Vathana shook her head. “How can you do it? You’re always out. We’ve reports of Khmer Rouge attacking villages above Kratie. Reports of bombings. Maybe South Viet Namese attack North Viet Namese on Cambodian soil. Samdech Euv’s wife, she and her brother...your father says they collaborate in rice smuggling to the VC and NVA. Don’t you listen to your father?”

“My father knows only money,” Teck shouted. “There’s nothing to worry about. In a short time all this will pass.”

“Pass! A short time! It gets worse.”

“You know what I hear? I hear the people in the countryside help the Khmer Rouge because they can trust the Khmer Rouge. I hear the Communists are good. Tell that to my father. I hear they help the farmers. My father talks of crocodiles. It’s the Royal Army who are crocodiles. Ha! All the people in the city are afraid. He’s afraid. You’re afraid. You should be. Ha!”

“Teck! Stop it!”

“No! If the Khmer Rouge build a solid relationship with the peasants, why should I object? The government doesn’t help them. You make believe you want to help people but you’re just like my father.”

“Your father’s a good man. You should be half like him.”

“I’m sick of being under his control. And of you controlling me for him. I’m going dancing.” Teck steamed to the door. “Think”—he grasped the handle—“if the barge crew fires at anyone, it’ll be Khmers they kill. Tell that to your monk and my father.”

“I will,” Vathana began, “and, wait, I’ve got to tell you...”

“You tell me nothing.” Teck slammed the door.

“...tell you that”—she hung her head, tears came to her eyes—“that I’m pregnant.”

China! Nang thought. He stared at the soldiers before him. China! The concept stirred stories from his early youth, stories of adventure, of an exotic and rich land. Yet he yearned for Cambodia. Beyond the lush green rolling hills, over the mountains, down the trail, there was a people’s war, a movement to liberate his homeland from the feudalism of Norodom Sihanouk, from the capitalism of the right, the imperialism of overseas Chinese and Westerners, and the invasion by the yuon armies.

Guoshen surveyed his new charges. “I’m here to teach you,” he said. His smile flicked, his eyes set on Nang, his smile froze. Nang’s eyes were the most animal he had ever seen. Guoshen welcomed Nang, then the others. “It’s our duty to teach, to give you a strong mental foundation in politics and order. Others will teach you the mechanics of war. I will teach you the spirit of revolution. I will tell you
how
to convert others.”

As Guoshen spoke, Nang sized him up. Round faced, Nang thought. Square bodied, quick tongued. Ha! Nang thought. Larger than me, larger than my father, but not Khmer, not pure. Nang felt superior, yet he was aware of an inferiority, a backwardness he sensed all Khmers, all third-world soldiers, must feel when surrounded by the military hardware of a superpower. Nang felt isolated, stuck in a foreign training camp where even other Khmers seemed alien. The front! He dreamed of it. He prayed for it. Let me go to the front, he thought. Let me be a soldier. Then he thought of Bok Roh. Let me see him, he thought. Let me see that face. Then let me go.

“...we shall, as one, create new socialist men,” Guoshen was saying.

Nang looked past the Chinese boy. Four Soviet PT-76 light tanks were crossing a field beyond what would be their first bivouac. The tanks were joined by six Chinese Type 59s, copies of the Soviet medium T-54. Within minutes the armor, with their huge 100mm guns, disappeared. Power, Nang thought, power.

“...The goal,” Guoshen quoted Mao, “is to demolish all old ideology and culture, to create and cultivate among the masses an entirely new proletarian ideology and culture. You and I are vehicles. Youth, those least poisoned by tradition, can wipe out feudalism, capit...”

Then let us go do it, Nang’s thought broke in.

“...all items of the past shall be flung into the fires which smelt the future. All people with problems of thought must be denounced, exposed and publicly humiliated...”

Again the tanks roared into view. Nang stopped listening. The PT-76s were followed by several armored personnel carriers and a dozen trucks trailing twin-barreled 23mm antiaircraft guns. Nang wanted to learn about the guns, about their firepower. Guoshen’s ideology did not interest him.

“Met Nang!” A Khmer cadreman interrupted his wandering thoughts. “Later you’ll be taught about them. Pay attention here.”

For months Nang paid attention. The school, the People’s Liberation Army Camp for Foreign Nationals north of the Lihsien River in southern China, trained soldiers from different nations, or different factions within a nation. Training was carried out with little contact between groups. Though boys and girls from Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, India, Japan, Thailand, Laos, North and South Viet Nam, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Pakistan were all being trained, Krahom cadets had no contact with them, nor did they mingle with Khmer Viet Minh trainees. The staff was international consisting largely of Maoist Chinese or Red Guard Youth, and Chinese graduates of Moscow’s School of Terrorism. It also included some Russians and Eastern Europeans and a dozen Cubans. Units were grouped into battalions, led by semipermanent cadres of their own countrymen who lived with them, cared for them, treated them like precious family, ensured that their needs, within the parameters of the training mission, were met.