For the Sake of All Living Things (25 page)

“Might Bok Roh be there?” Nang had asked.

“Bok Roh!” Ang had stepped back, laughed as if the name were a joke. “That’s only a legend.”

The town of Bokor, on Highway 3 between Sihanoukville and Kampot, sat at the terminus of the Cardamom Mountains where the ridge hooked south and dropped precipitously into the sea. It was controlled by the NVA though a Khmer administration coexisted. During the dry season huge villas, gleaming like jewels set in the 3,500-foot cliff overlooking the town, were crammed with North Viet Namese, Viet Cong, Red Chinese and Soviet officials. Under monsoon skies the villas held only skeleton crews. Beneath the mountain, unseen, the NVA had a massive storage facility. Only bandits and the Krahom underground existed outside the woven net.

“Red and blue crab soup,” Nang said cockily to the woman in the soup stand. He eyed an NVA soldier who openly directed traffic at a nearby intersection. The woman nodded and disappeared. Nang laughed quietly. The trip had been easy. He had stolen a bicycle and chased the Haklee convoy, coming forty kilometers the first day. He had then settled into an elevated jungle thicket from which he counted trucks for ten days. Every day, often three times a day, the same truck convoys passed east below him then returned west, empty. Eight to twelve trucks per convoy, three convoys, two or three trips each day. In the first seven days, 481 truckloads of arms and ammunition passed below him. Then the trucks stopped. Nang waited. Nothing. A few cars. A light truck. Several students on bicycles.

Nang rode to Bokor, a young boy on a bike not unlike others, entering the arms-rich resort as it reeled from new decrees. The balance of power between competing elements, which only weeks before had seemed stable, was now teetering on Norodom Sihanouk’s change of diplomatic tactics—a change perhaps motivated by America’s illegal show of willpower, the secret bombings of border sanctuaries. By May 1969 the North Viet Namese and the Khmer Viet Minh presence in Cambodia was so great, Sihanouk took action. In the first week of the month he announced that Cambodian MiG fighter-bombers had attacked NVA positions in the border area. Then he expressed his interest in reestablishing relations with the United States. Simultaneously, Sihanouk
verbally
suspended Communist use of the port facilities at Sihanoukville and the first American troops were withdrawn from South Viet Nam. In June, under direct orders from Sihanouk and the prime minister of the new “last-ditch” government, Penn Nouth, Royal Army soldiers seized a large shipment of arms destined for the NVA/VC.

“Red and blue crab soup.” The woman reappeared and whispered, “There’s none here. Try the yellow house with two porches.”

All day Nang was sent from one location to another. His frustration rose. He did not know what had happened at the national level, did not know what new orders had come from Phnom Penh. Finally a young woman whispered to him, “Met Hout has been seized. Go away.”

“I can release him,” Nang said quietly.

The woman looked at the boy and scoffed. “You?”

Nang’s face went rigid. He was too tired to continue the guise. He straightened his back, grew in height to match hers, his shoulders widened, his chest bulged beneath his loose-fitting shirt until the shirt seemed ready to split. The woman’s jaw dropped. She stepped back. “I am Met Nang of Angkar Leou,” he announced. His eyes pierced her. “I am the eyes of Angkar Leou.” Nang’s voice came from deep in his chest. “I am the spirit. I am the sacrifice. Angkar Leou will be obeyed.”

“Come in. Hide here.” The woman flitted nervously. “I’ll gather the others.” She grabbed a market basket and fled.

Nang rifled the house for currency and food. His head jerked at every sound. He stood back from the windows, searched the outside from the dark within. He felt caged. Monsoon dusk settled upon Bokor. No one appeared. Nang needed to make contact, needed information, needed to send and receive word from Sar, from the Center. A feeling of abandonment swept over him. He stepped to a side window, deflated, slid out. Again he looked like an eight-year-old boy.

Night fell. Still no one appeared. “I am the sacrifice,” Nang repeated to himself. “I am the will of Angkar Leou.” His head nodded. He raised it, shook it. Nodded again. He did not wish to sleep. He recited successive creeds he’d learned at the School of the Cruel. He sat at perfect attention. Recited quietly. Nodded and fell asleep.

“Here!” the soldier shouted. “He’s sleeping.”

“Watch it,” the sergeant warned. “He’s probably armed.”

Nang opened his eyes. The day had dawned gray. Then concussion and pain erupted at his abdomen as a soldier’s kick connected. Then, before he could react, a second kick to his kidneys. Someone wired his wrists behind his back. Then he was blindfolded.

“That him?” he heard a soldier ask.

“Yes.” He recognized the young woman’s voice.

“You sure, Sister? He’s just a little kid.”

All morning Nang remained blindfolded and bound. At first they brought him to a building and made him sit, alone, on a cool concrete floor. Nang deflated himself to the total limit of his guise. He was not twelve, not eight, but five. At five he could cry, whimper, whine, talk such nonsense no one could take him seriously. He peed his pants.

“Augh, damn,” a low-level guard said. “Why’re they holding him?”

“They say he’s Khmer Rouge,” a second guard answered.

“If that’s Khmer Rouge,” the first said, “who cares?”

“I want my father,” Nang whined. He cried loudly.

“Shit,” the first guard said. “Why did Sihanouk have to disrupt everything?”

More hours passed. A squad of Royal soldiers pulled Nang from the concrete room, made him march, blindfolded, toward the mountain. He was expert at walking in blackness, at letting his feet guide themselves to firm footings, but he could not show it. Every few meters he stumbled, every few stumbles he fell. His shirt ripped on one fall, he split his forehead on another. Blood trickled down his temple, curled about his cheekbone, ran to his jaw then dripped from the tip of his chin. He cried like a terrified five-year-old. A guard grabbed his upper arm firmly, helped him up and led him. He stumbled again jamming his toes into a step and burst out with a horrible shriek.

“Eh,” the guard grunted. “Listen, Little Brother, I’ll take this off you if you promise to stop screaming.” Then to the others, “I’m going to take the blindfold off.”

Nang whimpered. The guard pried the knotted cloth up over the back of his head. Nang grimaced in pain. He made them stand still as he pretended to let his eyes adjust. Through his squint he counted and sized up the soldiers. It surprised him to see they all wore complete Royal Cambodian uniforms and all were armed with AK-47 assault rifles. They did not look at all like the ragtag national troops he’d seen in the Northeast. Sixty thousand North Viet Namese troops in Cambodia, Nang thought, and Norodom Sihanouk had his best troops chasing little boys. He laughed inwardly and thought, The guards think exactly the same.

The guards seemed somber, too somber for those thoughts. Nang walked grudgingly up the steep path. A faint deep moaning sound came from the mountain as if a syrup-thick wind was pushing through the trees, but there was no wind. They walked past the outer walls of the first villa, then onto a narrow road which wound inward and upward, away from the cliff, past two more villas, neither as expansive as the first. The faint low soughing continued. They followed the road as it curved back, upward, back to the highest and most magnificent villa at the edge of the highest overlook.

Before they reached the upper villa the guards reblindfolded him. They marched him to a small block structure outside the villa walls and threw him into a cell with a dozen blindfolded, bound men. This time Nang did stumble, over a body, and crashed down hard on his face. The door banged shut. Nang whined, “ssshh!” a voice whispered, “listen to see if they go.” Nang froze. For a moment everyone was still. Then breathing began. Nang held his breath. He counted the breathing. Four, five, six. More. Then, from the whisperer, a faint exhale. Nang breathed. He righted himself and sat still. The cell smelled stale, foul. “ssst. don’t remove your blindfold,” the whisperer said. “they’ll hang you for that.”

“I want my father,” Nang whimpered.

“who are you?”

“Y Bhur,” Nang answered.

“ssshh. mountaineer? who’s your father, boy?”

“Y Ksar,” Nang answered. “He drives a truck. I came...”

“No talking in there!”
The door screeched. Nang could feel the air first being sucked from the room then rushing back. “Grab that boy.”

“better to die than submit.”

“I want my father,” Nang cried in Jarai.

“Take Mister Hout and those students to the cliff.”

Inside the villa, Nang’s blindfold was removed. The wires at his wrists were loosened, not about the wrist but extended between them. He looked quickly about. The room was sealed, saved one unbarred, unshuttered, unglassed window. Two guards stood by the closed door. A large round yellow man who looked to Nang like Guoshen’s father stood near the window. The man bowed slightly. “They say you are called Comrade Nang,” the man said in Jarai.

“I am Y Bhur,” Nang whimpered.

“If you don’t cooperate you may be killed,” the man said softly. He turned and looked out the window. “Come here,” he said. Nang cowered. “Come here!” Nang approached two steps. Stopped. “I won’t hurt you,” the man said, “unless you refuse to cooperate.” Nang stepped closer to the window. Outside, heavy afternoon rain had begun. Through the rain and mist Nang sensed the wall was an extension of the cliff face. He stepped closer. “Did you know Comrade Hout well?” The interrogator motioned at an angle through the window. Nang looked. The cliff rim formed a large U with the villa on the right and the sheerest and deepest face at the curve. Above the curve four men stood blindfolded and bound. A squad of soldiers stood behind them. The interrogator stuck his hand with a forefinger extended out the window, then flicked his wrist, pointing the finger down. At the cliff a soldier with a long bamboo lance jabbed one man in the back. The man lurched forward, dropped. He screamed. Then all was silent.

“You have committed war crimes,” the interrogator said. “You are subject to punishment as a war criminal.”

Nang’s mind raced. At once he thought he could kill all three men and throw them from the window, confuse them with his child act, withstand any interrogation.

“They say you are Comrade Nang,” the interrogator repeated in Khmer.

“I am Y Bhur, son of Y Ksar,” Nang answered in broken Khmer. “I want my father. He drives a truck for Samdech Euv.”

The interrogator strolled leisurely about Nang, stepped back to the window and flicked his wrist. Another man lurched, screamed. From below an eerie moaning gurgled up the cliff to the window.

“Remove his shirt,” the interrogator ordered. A guard came forward, ripped Nang’s shirt from his back. Even deflated, his hard wiry body could not be mistaken for that of a child. Harshly the yellow man rasped, “Comrade Nang, you will tell me who you are, what your unit is, where you are from. What’s your mission?”

“Honest, Uncle,” Nang pleaded in a mix of Mountaineer and Khmer words and phrases. “I’m not with any unit. I’m with my father. He’s a driver. I’m Y Bhur. Please, Uncle.”

“Don’t give me that ‘Uncle’ dung. Your scars say you’re a soldier.” The interrogator grabbed Nang by the hair and forced his head out the window. The vertical drop was a hundred meters. The interrogator sliced his free hand horizontally through the air. At the cliff two soldiers grabbed a man as a third soldier slashed his abdomen open. In the gray of stones and rain and sky the student’s belly burst red. A scream reached the window seemingly disconnected from the torture. “I want to be your friend, Nang. You must cooperate.” Moaning now came from both below and across.

“I am Y Bhur,” Nang answered in a firm voice. “Bok Roh killed my father, Y Ksar! I heard he’s in Bokor. I’ve come to kill him.”

“Bok Roh!?” The interrogator backed away. First one guard, then both, began to laugh. “Bok Roh is a fairy tale.”

“Bok Roh is a yuon agent,” Nang spat. “He killed my whole village.”

The interrogator smacked Nang’s face with the back of his hand. “You called yourself Met Nang,” the round man said angrily. Again he grabbed Nang’s hair, jerked him to the window smashing his head against the frame. “I don’t have time for your games.” He pointed out the window and flicked his finger again and the whisperer was jabbed. He fell to his knees at the rim. The lancer jabbed him repeatedly. He squirmed, blindfolded, bound. His right leg fell over. He kicked it up, swung it back toward his unseen attacker. Nang zoomed in on the struggle. The soldier caught the kicking leg with the lance point. On contact he thrust. The whisperer, his own force kicking against the lance, spun his torso onto the edge. Slowly, he slid backwards, seemingly trying to hook his heels on the rim, then he fell away. No scream. No moaning. In the last seconds Nang shifted his eyes to the squad at the cliff. Only the lancer watched. The others had turned away.

Nang was blindfolded again. The interrogator left. The two guards beat him with their fists, though they beat him lackadaisically for they saw him as he claimed to be, a young Mountaineer child searching for a fairy-tale character who had killed his father. Nang bore the blows without reaction, without sound. He had not been so beaten since the first Krahom school and he’d almost forgotten the pleasure of withstanding a beating, of beating the torturer with utter passivity.

They threw him back in the block cell outside the villa. He listened as they left, then counted the breathing of his cellmates. Eight.

“brothers, do any of you know where is bok roh?” Nang whispered in Jarai.

No one answered. He repeated the question in Khmer. A quiet answer: “i’ve heard he’s on the border at bu ntoll.”

Nang sat forward. He bent his knees, placed his eyes on the knees and began to rub the blindfold back and forth, up and down. The cloth was very tight. Slowly he was able to raise one corner enough so a crack of light entered. He worked the other side. The pressure hurt his eyeballs. He tilted his head back. He could see. Nang put his head down on his knees and rested. Then he forced his arms down, his buttocks up between his wrists. His back bent like a bow. He forced his wrists forward to under his knees. There he was able to loosen the wires.