For the Sake of All Living Things (27 page)

On 6 August, Nang was briefly interviewed a second time, and on the seventh, a third. He was held aboveground in loose “camp arrest” where he was observed and lightly guarded. Had the attacks not been imminent Nang likely would have been handled differently, but with plans set and preparation for the offensive under way, there was no time to concentrate on the small Mountaineer who called himself Khat Doh, who wished to avenge his father.

“You may work at the hospital,” the last interviewer told him. “Assist the nurses. Help them clean. Later we’ll talk again.”

At three
A.M
., 8 August, the NVA began to move out. Thousands of men climbed from the mountain’s beehive of tunnels and caves to march down scores of narrow paths which led to secret border-crossing sites, fanned out and filtered into southern II Corps and northern III Corps.

In the underground medical station Nang paced, an animal in a cage. “Can’t I go,” he asked the section leader; a strong girl named Thi.

“No.” She laughed. “You’re still a baby.”

“I am not,” he said haughtily.

“You help me here.” Thi smiled pleasantly.

“Bok Roh is my uncle,” Nang said desperately. “I should find him. I could carry his pack.”

Thi shot him a wary glance. “You help here,” she said. “That giant needs no help.”

“Nor do you,” Nang countered.

“There’s been little fighting,” Thi said. “Now there’ll be much. Besides, his company’s just left. You keep oil in the lamps, bring the stretchers back up to the dispensary, help the soldiers with their food. When the giant returns, you’ll see him.”

Nang slunk glumly to a corner. He withered before Thi’s eyes, no longer the ten-year-old Khat Doh, but now a six-year-old. Thi watched him for a few moments as she went about her chores. She felt concern, as one might for a sulking pet, but she thought better than to interfere with the savage’s withdrawal. Thi turned from the boy, walked to a crate of wound dressings and began to unpack and organize them into shelves built into the earthen walls. When she turned again, her spare uniform shirt, a rucksack, a medical kit and the boy were gone.

Night was falling on the Mekong. To the east the sky was leaden, to the west pink, almost violet. Vathana stood by the pier. The barge had been pushed into the channel by a small tug and was now maneuvering into the wake of a freighter heading to Phnom Penh. Vathana rested her hands on her bulging tight abdomen. She was warm, content. The past month had been good. No incidents on the river, no fights with Teck. And the easing of trade restrictions had eliminated an entire layer of bureaucrats who needed to be paid
bonjour
before any cargo could be off-loaded at the capital. The barge turned in the current. The setting sun glinted in the water and reflected red off the wave wash on the barge side, making the cumbersome ark look as if it were dancing lightly on flames.

From the corner of her eye Vathana caught movement. She turned her head. Something darted. Crates of rotting vegetables were stacked four high in a haphazard wall at quay edge. She took a step away. Rats, she thought. She turned back to the barge. The sun dipped, the water became dull, the barge black, ugly. Again at the corner of her eye, a flashed blackness. She snapped her head. Not a rat, a hand. Gone!

“Oh!” She thought to hurry away. Quickly she back-stepped, began to turn. Again the hand, small. Vathana stopped, puzzled, stared. The hand darted into a crate, seemed to stick, then quickly withdrew with a handful of limp bean pods. Vathana moved slowly, quietly, forward. The sky was now deep gray. She walked to a point in the line of crates ten box lengths from where she’d seen the small hand. She laid a hand on a crate and leaned over. Her belly hit the middle box. She adjusted her stance, leaned between two stacks and looked down behind the wall. A small child was eating the garbage. At first Vathana did not understand what she was seeing. He should be home, she thought. What kind of mother would allow such a young one to play here at this hour? But the child was not playing. Vathana squeezed in farther to get a better look. She saw a second child. The sky was getting very dark. She squeezed out, walked down a few stacks, peered over. No one. She stepped down a few more, poked her head between. Still, no one.

“All right,” she said in a motherly voice, “come out here.” She waited. Nothing moved. For a second she felt very self-conscious talking to the crate wall of rotting plants. She started to go. She touched her belly, took a breath, then commanded, “Come out right now. This has gone on long enough.” She paused, readied herself to plunge in. Suddenly a small face appeared. Vathana looked at the child sternly. “Come,” she said. Her voice was firm, not harsh. “Bring the other.”

A tiny boy, perhaps just three, emerged. He was thin, frail, a swollen stomach protruding from his ripped, dirty shirt. Awkwardly Vathana knelt down, held out a hand. Then a small girl, identical in size to the boy, appeared. “What are you children doing back there?” The children didn’t answer. “Come now,” Vathana said louder. “Why aren’t you home?” The children cringed, their faces pinched, lower lips protruded, curled down as if they were about to cry. Still they were silent. Vathana leaned forward, braced herself on the pier with one hand, reached out to touch the little girl with the other. The child didn’t move. Gently Vathana grasped her hand. Still kneeling she righted herself, bringing the girl to her side. “Do you live here?” No utterance. Vathana stood. She held the girl’s right hand in her left, held out her right for the boy. Hesitantly he reached up, placed his small hand in hers. Vathana stepped slowly toward the main road. She looked first at one child, then the other. “We’ll find your mom,” she whispered. The little girl tugged, resisted. “What is it?” Vathana asked, again puzzled, now becoming tired, frustrated. Night had settled on Neak Luong.

Still the imps said nothing, but a new sound came. Something was crouched at the end of the wall, watching, wide-eyed. A shiver crossed Vathana’s shoulders. She glared into the darkness at the new intrusion, straightened her shoulders, maternally protective, holding the hands of the little ones, challenging, intimidating the unseen. “Come along,” she said very properly, attempting to ignore the potential danger.

The thing cried softly like a cat. Vathana looked at the children, then again into the shadow behind the crates. Again the cry. The little boy whimpered. The girl pulled, trying to loosen her hand from Vathana’s.

“You come out too,” Vathana ordered. “That’s no place to play.” Now a skinny girl, looking six, shyly, emerged. “Are there any more?” The older girl shook her head. “Then come along. You looked starved. And you
certainly
need baths.”

“What do you mean bringing those filthy urchins in here?!”

“I found them on the pier.”

“I don’t care if you found them in a...a cola bottle. I won’t have them in my house.”

“This one is Seta...” Vathana began.

“Stop! Get them out of here.”

“Teck...”

“Give them to your monk.”

“Teck, they...they stowed away on...”

“Then stow them back. You can throw ’em into the river for all I care.”

“They’re border children.”

“They’re what?”

“Orphans. From the border region. Seta said her...”

“Augh! Get them out of here. I’m going out. They’re to be gone when I return.”

Teck left the apartment. Furiously he leaped down the four flights of stairs, ran through the courtyard, stopped only when he reached the main road. He looked right. A few lights shone, the doctors’, the pagoda, some at the garrison beyond. To the left, a few hundred meters down, began Neak Luong’s small strip of cafes and dance halls. Teck slogged through the dim stretch, through his anger and bitterness and despair until he reached the rim of the first club’s lights. Then he straightened, slicked back his hair and walked through the light, glancing in for friends. He passed two more establishments, entered the next.

“Teck,” three young men greeted him.

“Hallo Sakun, Kim, Louis. You are all here.”

“Where else?” Louis joked. “Just waiting for you.” They all laughed silly laughs.

“Where’s Thiounn?”

“His father has obtained a position for him,” Sakun said.

“A position?” Teck pulled his head back with question. The four moved to a small table at the rear of the cafe. A waiter brought their usual, small cups of dark thick coffee laced with chocolate shavings.

“Some position,” Kim muttered. “He won’t be allowed to do a thing.”

“He’ll get to sit in an office and watch the pretty girls,” Louis countered, and again they all laughed.

“What about you?” Sakun asked Teck. “Your father won’t hire you?”

“I won’t be hired,” Teck corrected.

“And what about a teaching position? Can’t the Madame come up with something?”

“Oh come on!” Teck jerked his shoulders haughtily. “Mother thinks I’m very well situated now. She says to me, ‘Why would you want to be in a room with all those foolish brats?’ Besides, the Prince has seen to it that none of the
neak ches-doeng
will ever work. You know I’ve applied.”

“Ha!” Louis chided him. “Maybe there’s no opening for an expert on Monet.” The young men giggled.

Teck pouted. “Paintings are important,” he said firmly. “They enrich life. It’s only Sihanouk’s fears which makes for no openings.”

The four friends talked and sipped their coffee. Louis nudged Teck each time the daughter of the owner emerged from the small kitchen. Each time Teck looked, the girl glanced shyly at him then immediately turned away. “She likes you,” Louis teased Teck.

“She likes anything in pants,” Teck whispered defensively.

“She doesn’t look at Kim or Sakun,” Louis baited him. “Well, maybe at me!”

“Ha! That’s because she knows,” Teck blurted the words between spitting snickers, “they’ve nothing in their pants.”

Louis laughed and they all prodded one another and finished their drinks. Then Kim said, “Let’s go in back.”

Quietly the young men rose and followed Kim into a hallway with many doors. They shuffled in silence to a room Kim had rented. The cubicle was tiny, no bigger than a cell, windowless, airless, with but a single small low table with two candles burning. Teck locked the door. They sat. Now Louis opened a small sheet of aluminum foil exposing a cube about the size of a lump of sugar. He methodically crumbled the block into grains, curled the foil so the grains lay loosely in a trough. Very carefully, slowly, Louis passed the foil over one candle. Teck, Kim and Sakun leaned in tight. Back and forth, gently, Louis heated the foil until the heroin began to ooze heavy cream-colored smoke. Louis stretched his neck, his face forward, his nose in the smoke. He inhaled deeply, leaned back. The smoke swirled up in the rising heat, fell gracefully back-upon itself as it cooled. Teck pulled a soda straw from his pocket. The smoke became thicker as the crumbs became hotter. Teck put the straw to his lips, put the open end in the thickest swirl, sucked it in and held it. He passed the straw to Kim. The straw went around three times. Then the young men leaned back, relaxed. “Never,” Sakun whispered, “never will Sihanouk let us work.” They all giggled.

They crossed the border. Monsoon thunder exploded above the peaks, trembled in the valleys. With each clap heavy rain crashed in sheets against thick vegetation. Nang fell in at the back of a column, behind a squad of ammo porters. The column wound slowly down trackless ravines where streams gushed. They climbed little, sought crevices below knolls, circled rises beneath thick canopy where humid air seemed as impenetrable as jungle growth. At each rest Nang moved up. Slyly he asked porters or privates details of the plan. By evening he knew he was with an element of the NVA 272d Regiment, that they had moved southwest from Bu Ntoll, crossed between American Special Forces camps at Due Lap and Bu Prang, and were on schedule for a four-day trek which would take them nearly sixty kilometers to a staging area south of Phuoc Binh and Song Be City. There they would rendezvous with other infiltrating elements.

The sky darkened. Rain slowed to a constant patter on the leaves. From caves in Bu Ntoll, NVA gunners began firing 130mm shells at Bu Prang. The column rose, followed the guides. Counterbattery artillery from Bu Prang answered the NVA guns. For an hour Nang’s column meandered behind the scout, beneath cover of darkness, concealment of rain, diversion of artillery duel. NVA soldiers knew the imperialist forces—the American 173d Airborne Brigade, the South Viet Namese 23d Division, and the American Special Forces-led Mountaineer units—relied on seismic sensor devices near the border to detect liberation troop movements, yet they moved without concern. Porters told Nang the rain and thunder would interfere with detection. The column stopped. They entered a fortified, camouflaged way station hidden in dense bamboo groves. Night settled. The rain ceased. A chill wind blew above the camp swaying the bamboo. Nang lay awake, tense, planning.

“Take that boy to Major Bui,” a lieutenant broke in an hour before first light. “How could no one know who he is? Get the giant to interpret. Don’t trust these
moi
porters.”

Nang started. He wasn’t certain he understood but he thought he had heard mention of the giant. A soldier motioned him up. He bowed his head to the lieutenant. Sheepishly he dragged his feet. His mind raced with possible scenarios, possible lies.

The structure at the center of the way station was four low cornerposts with a vine-lashed ridge pole and bamboo joists covered with thatch. Beneath, in the glow of a small oil lantern, three men sat in large wicker chairs. Two wore NVA officer uniforms. One wore a simple unmarked khaki tunic.

“Excuse me, sir,” Nang’s escort interrupted. “We have a mountain boy who’s been assisting the porters but who is unknown to them. Lieutenant Hoa thought he should be questioned by Mister Bok.”

Nang bowed before the three men. As he lowered his head he noted both officers had their pistols disassembled for cleaning. Between them lay a map. Then Nang saw Bok Roh. His heart leaped. He fought to keep his face empty, to deny his rage visible vent. Bok glanced up sleepily. He had an issue of
Nhan Dan
, Hanoi’s newspaper, on his lap and a copy of
Paris Match
in his hands. “So, who are you?” Bok asked in Mnong.