For the Sake of All Living Things (38 page)

“I don’t know, Maha Vanatanda,” Chhuon lamented.

“If you crave to demonstrate your pain, doesn’t the desire create its own image and isn’t the image an illusion? Hasn’t the craving created the illusion?”

Chhuon dropped his head. “There is something else.”

“Yes.”

“They want me to lead the village.”

“The new administrators?”

“Yes.”

“They will pass.”

“They say if one cadre is injured, ten villagers will likewise be harmed. If a cadreman is killed, ten villagers will die. They’ve even drawn up a list which tells the order in which villagers will be executed. You...I thought to escape to the forest, to join the maquis, but they say if I go one hundred people will be executed. You are first on the list.”

The monk smiled. “I should be honored to be thought of so highly.”

“Should I surrender to their demands?” Chhuon asked.

“When a tree falls on a man his knees buckle and he surrenders to its weight,” Maha Vanatanda said. “This is a surrender which is not a surrender.”

A wave of anguish flooded Chhuon’s mind. Maha Vanatanda has not grasped what I say, he thought. Vehemently Chhuon said, “They hold us prisoner.”

“Time passes,” the monk said. “Do not be trapped in time. This authority will pass as have all others.”

“We’re being enslaved!” Chhuon was exasperated. “We’re prisoners!” He tensed. His knees flared with pain, his stomach burned.

“We hold ourselves prisoners,” the monk said. “If our bodies toil for them, then our bodies are enslaved, but we are not our bodies. If we let them convince our minds we are slaves, then they have enslaved us.”

“But”—the heat rose, hit the back of Chhuon’s throat—“if we don’t recognize the prison or the guards, how can we escape?”

“From which prison, Chhuon, do you wish escape?” The monk paused. “Come to your center,” he said gently. “Let your desires fall away.” He closed his eyes. “I vow,” the monk chanted quietly, “to become enlightened for the sake of all living things. Do you remember the vows?”

“It’s...it’s been a long time.” Chhuon hesitated. He clenched his teeth.

“I will cut my ties to delusive passions,” the monk chanted. Chhuon breathed deeply. He hesitated. The monk remained silent. Lowly Chhuon repeated the prayer. “I will open myself to the supreme way of the Enlightened One,” the monk droned.

“I
will
open myself to the way of the Enlightened One,” Chhuon said. He would try, he told himself.

“Listen. Trust your heart. If you are in doubt, listen more closely. Do not be your desires, but that does not say, ‘Do not be.’ If doubt persists, pause. Actions which are necessary will come to you.”

From the street the blare of loudspeakers interrupted them. “Trust your heart,” the monk repeated.

From the steps of the pagoda Chhuon saw two jeeps mounted with speakers, thirty, perhaps forty village militiamen, a dozen North Viet Namese soldiers wearing pins with the usual picture of Norodom Sihanouk, and scores of village children grasping for the Sihanouk buttons being freely distributed. Chhuon’s brow furrowed. He inhaled deeply, exhaled, inhaled deeply, exhaled. Trust your heart, he repeated to himself. Trust your heart. Among the children were Khieng and Heng who had stripped Samnang of his pants so long ago. Chhuon stood on the top step, alone, watching the grasping horde grow to include young adults, middle-aged women, old men, all reaching out for the trinkets. For illusions, he thought. On the far side of the village street, unreaching, watching, was the orphaned Mountaineer boy, Kpa, who as a toddler had been brought to the village to live with and help a childless couple, Kpa who had defended Samnang at school so long ago. Chhuon stared into Kpa’s distant face and saw the reflection of his own Kdeb, asleep, peaceful, without tension, without aggravation. Chhuon looked up past the overhang, through the trees into the overcast. I shall become enlightened...

“...I have been odiously calumniated and dishonored by the Lon Nol group...” The voice of Norodom Sihanouk burst from the loudspeakers. On 19 March, Sihanouk had flown from Moscow to Peking where over the next four days he had conferred with Zhou Enlai, Pham Van Dong and representatives of the Pathet Lao, Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge (both the Khmer Viet Minh and the Khmer Krahom). On the twenty-third the Prince announced to the international press his assumption of the role of leader in absentia of a Communist front (FUNK, an acronym from the French for National United Front of Kampuchea) comprising Khmer Rouge, Viet Cong, NVA and Pathet Lao forces to “liberate Cambodia from the right-wing dogs of Lon Nol.”

“...my people have lost everything...”—the speakers blasted the recorded message to the villagers—“...peace, dignity, independence, territorial integrity...”

Chhuon’s mind stopped. On the moment of clarity a thick haze descended engulfing past, present and future.

“...my people are immersed in the worst suffering, the worst misfortunes and the worst catastrophe in their history...”

Chhuon’s mind bolted, searching the fog for the patch of blue; then, as in an inner chess game, he juxtaposed a hundred pieces in imagined scenarios, played out each move in seconds, then brooded. There was no escape. He looked for Kpa but the boy was gone. He thought of the small angel house before his home which had fallen into disrepair and thought of the steps needed to repair it.

“...I can only hope for total victory of the revolution...for total defeat of the reactionary and pro-imperialist...”

“Uncle.” Hang Tung joined Chhuon on the pagoda steps.

“...the American imperialists will be beaten by the Viet Namese and our Khmer People’s Liberation Army...”

“I’m very happy to see that you are already here.”

“I’m here,” Chhuon answered flatly.

“You left very early this morning.”

“The village is large,” Chhuon said. “There are many people now. The committee requires their presence, eh?”

“...in my name...the establishment of the government-in-exile...the National United Front of Kampuchea...”

“Then you’ve notified everyone?” Hang Tung asked.

“I have sent word for all to be notified,” Chhuon answered.

Hang Tung’s lips parted into a thin smile. He watched Chhuon as Chhuon watched the crowd grow. He will obey, Hang thought. He is Khmer, he is Buddhist. Khmer Buddhists obey authority.

“...in my name...”—the Prince’s voice boomed from the speakers—“...I call on all those of my children, compatriots, military and civilian, who can no longer endure the unjust oppression, join the Liberation Army...raise up and oust the pretender regime, the treacherous Lon Nol, his lackey Sirik Matak and their masters, the American imperialists...rise up before the Lon Nol clique massacres all...join the maquis...engage in guerrilla warfare in the jungles against our enemies...the People’s Army...patriotic volunteers will provide you with rifles and ammunition. You will be provided proper military training...”

“It is our destiny, eh, Uncle?” Tung whispered to Chhuon.

“Is it?” Chhuon hid a sneer. He offered a slight smile. My body, he thought, you can imprison my body.

“Yes.” Tung smiled. “Now we are a village under Prince Sihanouk, loyal to the Prince, protected by our own army.”

“This is very good,” Chhuon said, hiding his sarcasm. He now knew that to disagree would be dangerous.

“It is up to us to shape the village, to unite it, to rid it of tyrants.” Hang Tung’s voice was smooth. “When the country is liberated all Khmers will unite.”

Chhuon smiled, his face an actor’s mask.

For nine days North Viet Namese and Khmer Viet Minh armed propaganda teams played tapes of Sihanouk’s speeches and pleas in Phum Sath Din and in Vietnamese-controlled villages and cities from Bokor to Battambang, from Preah Vihear to Prey Veng. Sihanouk broadcast his appeals via Radio Peking, Radio Hanoi, Viet Cong Liberation Radio, and Khmer Viet Minh channels urging the Khmer people to join the revolution against the republican government. The pleas of Samdech Euv, Prince Father, ignited in the rural and urban poor uncontrollable fires. These speeches were the primary stimulus for the growth of the maquis throughout the nation. Sihanouk’s words gave the Communists a cloak of respectability which they had never achieved through terrorism, conscription, or proselytizing. In Phum Sath Din, Khieng and Heng were the first of many to join up. They, like most of the nearly seventy thousand volunteers who joined the rebels over the next year, thought they were joining a new faction, the Khmer Rumdoah. They saw themselves as Royalist, not Communist.

When the world outside seems to be disintegrating a man likes to establish a solid calm within his own family. So it was that Pech Lim Song invited his second son and son’s wife to dinner on the evening of 27 March, invited them on a dual pretext: first to show them his new home and second to discuss the new national situation and its demand for new business policies. Yet the true reason was he sought reconciliation with Teck.

“The house is marvelous, Mother.” Teck twirled, waving an arm at the vaulted ceiling, the chandeliers, the rosewood balustrades guarding the second-floor balconies. He tapped his feet on the tiled floor. “Absolutely marvelous, Father,” he said in French. “It must have cost a fortune.”

The new home was a modest villa set on a forested rise (Madame Pech called it a hill) on Highway 15 a kilometer north of Neak Luong. In the ballroom the chatter was light, happy. A servant offered hors d’oeuvres, a band played traditional music on a sailing vessel-shaped bamboo xylophone to which even Sophan swayed gaily, clutching Mister Pech’s infant grandson as if the baby were a dance partner. Vathana stood alone in the darkened dining room. Through the French doors she could see the dim lights of the city reflected on the rumpled bottom of the night overcast. To the east over Boeng (Lake) Khsach Sa, the surrounding swamps and paddies, and the small but growing refugee shanty town, the night was an impenetrable amorphous black wall.

“Cost is not your concern,” Madame Pech retorted gaily. “Of course with the riel’s devaluation, why, it’s forty percent less now than when your father began...”

Vathana stepped to the dining room door, grabbed the door handle for balance, squeezed her eyes closed then opened them and stared into the night. This talk, this opulence, she thought, it’s not Khmer, it’s...but before she could complete the thought Pech Lim Song’s voice carried throughout the villa. “Let’s dine,” he said cheerily.

Vathana turned toward the ballroom. Two servants were leading the family toward her. She reached up, massaged her forehead briefly, then, smiling, stepped toward her father-in-law as the lights opened refracting and sparkling from crystal stemware and chandelier. “Outside,” she said pleasantly, “the night is as dark as it was in Phum Sath Din, and in here, it’s as lovely as the sun on the river.”

“Did you see the whole house?” Teck asked, not recalling her presence during his mother’s tour.

“Every corner.” Vathana smiled.

“Vin, Madame?”
A servant offered her a filled glass from a tray.

“Oui. Merci.”

Teck raised his glass. “To your good fortune and the good fortune of your home, Father,” he offered.

“To the good health of our family,” Mister Pech rejoined.

Conversation through the six-course continental meal was stilted, limited to details of house construction and banal chatter about the infant, Samnang. For an hour Vathana sat, uneasy, sure the topic would fall to politics. When it did she felt relieved.

“I hope he doesn’t return,” Teck said almost whimsically.

“I’m surprised you feel that way,” Mister Pech said.

“You were right, Father. Under Prince Sihanouk the country was weak.”

“It was a feudal kingdom,” Mister Pech said sadly. “Warlords, barons, each governor with his own fiefdom. The coup has brought a new era, an era of justice which will cleanse the system of feudal corruption. And yet...I...”

“You, Father?!” Teck smiled sympathetically.

“I’ll miss him. I won’t miss the corruption.” Pech Lim Song listed some of the more glaring mistakes of Norodom Sihanouk. After each item he said, “And still he was the monarch,” or “Yet still there was no amendment limiting his powers.”

Teck responded with conciliatory interjections of “He was a bore,” or “How I hated his films,” or “Those endless radio speeches.” Then Teck smirked, taunted his father, “But Father, you paid
bonjour
to everyone. It’s the traders who caused the bribes.”

Mister Pech glared at his second son, who now lowered his eyes, seemingly intent on the food. Madame Pech watched her husband. Vathana’s chest tightened. She was about to say business was impossible without
bonjour
when Sophan, who had been in the kitchen with the servants, approached and whispered to her. Vathana smiled. “Oh yes,” she said to Sophan. “Yes.” “It will take a few minutes, Angel.” Sophan bowed and left.

“Perhaps,” Mister Pech said when Sophan was gone, “you’re right. I wish it hadn’t happened as it has. I wish he weren’t humiliating himself and disgracing all Khmers with his Communist babble.
La sale guerre,
eh?”

Teck did not respond. Mister Pech tried to control his irritation but the absence of reaction made him seethe. “He was like a father,” Pech Lim Song said, “but a father who, though he sees to their needs, keeps his children locked in separate rooms so they neither mature nor unite. Now that he’s gone the feudal system will pass. The children will be free.”

“Free?” Teck blurted. “To mature? Are they prepared for that?” He smiled to soften his words. “Is the army ready for Lon Nol’s ‘holy war’? Are they ready to drive out the ‘evil ones’? If the new father is also a child, can the children become adults? Are
you
ready for it, Father?”

“I’m prepared to do what must be done,” Mister Pech said flatly.

Lightly Teck slapped the table. “Father! The country still has a feudal regime.”

“No,” Mister Pech said firmly. “It has passed. The National Assembly’s given only emergency powers to the prime min...”

“Sisowath Sirik Matak and Lon Nol!” Teck said the names as if they were an accusation.

“Yes,” Mister Pech said. “Your mother’s a Sisowath. This is good, eh?” Mister Pech cited the attributes of each man, then named other statesmen and listed their good deeds.