For the Sake of All Living Things (43 page)

“Sir...” Sambath had waited to be dismissed.

“Certainly...” Mister Pech answered distractedly. Then his face tightened. “Sambath,” he said loudly, “fill the generator tanks. Turn the lights on. All of them.” For the first time in a week Mister Pech seemed back in control. “If the Viet Namese come,” he commanded, “invite them in and serve them. The same if it be Khmer Rouge.”

With the mass death and destruction of Khmer people and Khmer property came the accelerated decline of tradition. Fewer women wore the white blouse and black skirt of mourning. Fewer men wore the black arm bands of grief. Fewer heads were shaved for the killed fathers or mothers or older siblings. It was not a matter of callousness created by the enormity of the terror which had descended upon the Southeast but more a matter of the overwhelming speed with which villages and families were changing. From great suffering comes great insight, Vathana thought. She sat on the edge of an army cot at the deepest corner of the tent. Great insight and great compassion. On the cot two women and a young boy lay listless—all with fevers, with thick nasal discharges going unheeded, with persistent black flies feeding from small scratches as if invited. From great insight and great compassion comes a peaceful heart. Vathana felt nauseous. Her thoughts calmed only a single compartment of her honeycomb mind. Carefully she swabbed the boy’s face with a tiny square of cloth she’d dipped into her bucket of soapy water. The flies swarmed about her hand then relit on the boy’s face; the water seemed to sizzle and evaporate on his skin like drops on a hot skillet. Vathana dropped the cloth in a second bucket, peeled another square from her bundle and then dipped it and washed the face of the younger of the two women. She rose, her bare feet swishing through uncleared rotting garbage and vomit on the mud beneath the cot. Again her abdomen tightened as if to expel its nonexistent contents. Vathana settled at the other side to clean the face of the older woman. Mother, she thought as the woman shivered beneath her touch, if you wake from your ordeal all your passion, all your desires will have vanished and you will have inner peace. The nausea had been constant for two days yet in her vow of silence and fasting she’d pressed on with her mission to relieve the suffering of these homeless wretches, to excise her own desires by becoming one with the sufferers. She rose. Her soap bucket was nearly empty, the used-clothes bucket nearly overflowing. Vathana closed her eyes. The blackness turned slowly, increasing the squeamishness of her stomach. Her left knee began to buckle. She opened her eyes. Righted her head. Stared at the lantern over the table where Sophan held her son as she processed another in the endless line of the uprooted.

Vathana reached the table, squatted behind the wet-nurse, dumped the dirty clothes into a large basket then held on to Sophan’s chair with all her remaining strength. “Angel! Angel, are you...? You look worse than the bedridden. Angel?”

Vathana looked up. Her face was blank. Her large eyes were sunk in their sockets. Sophan caressed her cheek. “Come,” the stocky woman said. She turned to the refugee and indicated he’d have to wait to register. “Come. Let me take you from here.” She wrapped Vathana in one arm like a young child, carried Samnang in the other, whispering to both a stream of prayers interspersed with curses. “No medicine. No clean water. Fourteen thousand people living on top of one another. Shit in the paddies. Bathe in the paddies. Drink from the paddies. Of course they’re all sick.”

In Sophan’s arms Vathana trembled. The nausea and vertigo ignited in her fears far worse than the shellings. Sophan led her slowly from the camp toward the river and then toward the apartment. The queasiness of her stomach erupted in a renting spasm. “You must eat and rest,” Sophan ordered softly.

“Sophan.” Vathana broke her vow. “My bleeding is late.”

The lieutenant’s face was dark, grim, like the ash from the funeral pyre. All night he’d stared at the well-lighted villa on the rise, stared as he directed the burial squad in the proper manner of burning the bodies of their comrades in arms, his Khmer brothers who’d been killed by the surprisingly fierce resistance of the FANK outpost on Highway 15. All night he’d prayed for their souls—haunted by the image of three who’d died with their eyes wide open, died before they’d been ready to leave this earth. All night he’d prayed that when his time came his eyes would be shut. All night he’d cursed the mocking lights of Mister Pech Lim Song’s villa and the arrogant capitalist dog who had dared him, taunted him, openly defied him, defied the Khmer Viet Minh and their North Viet Namese sponsors.

At seven forty-five on the morning of 6 May, Sambath swung the doors open, bowed, his hands raised high in respectful greeting, and invited in a KVM and an NVA captain and their contingents. “Mister Pech,” Sambath said in French, “had hoped you’d join him last night for dinner, sir. We’d turned the lights on as an invitation.”

“The house is surrounded,” the NVA captain said as if reporting a business statistic. “Bring everyone here. Now.”

“Of course, sir,” Sambath answered. “There’s only Mister Pech and I.” Subtly Sambath took note of each of the officers and scanned the villa porch. Politely he apologized for the lack of servants to feed the accompanying soldiers. “If the men won’t mind, sir,” the old servant said calmly, “I’ll serve the officers first.”

The captains made no comment. Behind them a Viet Namese sergeant forced his boot heel hard against the foyer floor tiles as if mesmerized by their quality. Beside them the KVM lieutenant from the burial detail ground his teeth.

Mister Pech appeared briefly behind the upper rosewood balustrade. In Viet Namese he called,
“Chao Bac.”
Hello Uncle. “At last you’ve come to liberate us!” He disappeared, reappeared a moment later on the stairs. A reinforced squad of soldiers entered the house through various doors. “Please”—Mister Pech smiled broadly—“make this building your command center. We’ve room for many. And—the best radios. I’ve arranged with Colonel Le Minh Lam for your units to...”

“Mister Pech,” the Khmer captain stopped the older man. “From your mouth comes buffalo dung.”

“Captain!” Mister Pech barked. He straightened, hardened like a general about to reprimand a subordinate. “Four American divisions are eating ground in this direction. Colonel Le has prepared”—the captain snapped his head to the Khmer Viet Minh lieutenant—“detailed defense plans”—then pointed to Sambath. Immediately the lieutenant raised his carbine. A shot exploded. The old servant stood motionless then began to collapse to one side, his left leg folding neatly three inches above the knee as his body crashed upon the tiles.

“You...” Mister Pech roared. “Colonel L—” From behind, two soldiers grabbed the magnate at his throat choking off the words, pinning his arms. Sambath whimpered.

“The first phase in the destruction of the government”—the Khmer captain spoke as if instructing the lieutenant—“is the destruction of the regime’s local authority. Do this and the central government will be isolated, unable to raise an army, rendered ineffective.” The lieutenant nodded stiffly. “He’s yours,” the Khmer captain said, and he and the NVA captain and their entourages saluted and marched out.

The lieutenant’s face was grim. He closed the exterior foyer doors and then the interior doors to the dining room, the ballroom and the hallway to the rear of the house. He walked to each slowly, moved deliberately, closing off the room with almost grand gestures. As he moved his mind cleared of thought, of feeling. He became pure duty.

“
Chao Bac
,” the lieutenant mocked Pech Lim Song. He walked to Sambath, whose legs were floating in a pool of blood. The lieutenant stepped over the sticky fluid, kicked the servant’s hip to flatten him on the floor, then stood on the old man so as to raise himself higher than Mister Pech. Sambath coughed. The toes of his left foot lay lifeless beneath his right arm, pointing at the ceiling. “Uncle...” the lieutenant said grimly, darkly, not mocking, not hateful, indifferent. He opened a folder handed him by an aide. “
La sale guerre
, Mister Pech?”

The two soldiers still held the landlord by the neck and arms. He twisted defiantly attempting to free his head but their strength was greater than his.

“You have blasphemed against Samdech Sihanouk, eh? These are your words: ‘His love for power keeps him corrupt.’ ” The lieutenant paused.

Mister Pech’s mind flashed, terrified. “Why? Why are you with these Viet Namese? They attack a neutral country. Loh Nol has declared a path of neutrality.”

“Humph! Neutral! The Politburo has declared Cambodia an active participant in the war. Thus it is a legal and justifiable target.”

The lieutenant pulled a second sheet from the folder. Mister Pech cringed, silent, settling his thoughts on an exterior bitterness—Why is America dragging its feet? They profess to ally them selves with all who resist tyranny....

“ ‘Sihanouk refuses to carry out land reforms,’ ” the lieutenant read. “Isn’t that a strange contradiction—the land baron damning the Prince? ‘The Viet Namese are two-headed snakes set upon ruling all Kampuchea. What we must fear is their hegemony.’ Your words!” Again the lieutenant raised his carbine. The two soldiers released their hold.

“Wait...”

The lieutenant fired a single round, the bullet smashing Mister Pech’s left knee.

“Hang them outside by the good leg.” The lieutenant’s voice was flat, emotionless. “
La sale guerre
, eh, Mister Pech?”

A
S THE WAR FOR
Cambodia continued its rapid, perverted, escalating transformation, so too did Met Nang’s role change, pervert, rise. Nang did not remain with the recruits he’d led into the forest northwest of Kompong Cham. They were turned over to other Krahom cadre for induction, indoctrination and training at the new schools. No longer were recruits sent to Pong Pay Mountain. The cloaked animosity between the Communist allies, and the now total NVA domination of the Northeast provinces, caused the Krahom leadership to close the School of the Cruel and to open smaller, dispersed, less politically oriented schools in the southwest Cardamom Mountains.

The war became more conventional and Nang became a more conventional soldier—a soldier in a small army which continued to shadow its mentor force like a little brother might follow a big even after the two have fought.

For days, as fighting between NVA and ARVN/US units flared along much of the border and between NVA and FANK forces across the southern coast and deep into the interior, Nang marched southwest, halfway across the nation. There he picked up a platoon of twenty-six newly trained boys, yotheas, and two older, teenage officers. Then Nang, as platoon sergeant, political cadreman and tactician, marched the soldiers north at a murderous pace. He did not make friends, hardly made acquaintances. His friend was the Movement, the organization, the cause. Let the platoon leader and XO make friends, he thought. He’d made friends before. He’d had family before: What had happened to them—to them all? Nang would lead the platoon, could lead them too, because they too were products of Angkar Leou. They marched around Phnom Penh, through the NVA units besieging Kompong Chhnang, led by Met Nang as Met Sar had directed, to the outskirts of Kompong Thom where they rendezvoused with other Krahom elements, where they waited as Nang slipped from them, spied on them and on others, waited to be turned over to the 91st Division of the North Viet Namese Army for whom Nang and his boy-soldiers would serve as runners, insurgents and porters.

Before being placed under the operational control of the NVA’s 91st, Nang’s platoon was chosen to serve as honor guard at a one-day summit meeting of Khmer Krahom, Khmer Viet Minh and NVA officers northeast of Kompong Thom.

Dawn broke. The yotheas, only six of twenty-nine carrying firearms, entered the concealed jungle-swamp headquarters of NVA Colonel Le Duc Tu. Escorting them were four armed, strack, spit-shined and polished North Viet Namese soldiers. With few words the yotheas took up positions around the exterior of the large thatch-roofed hut. Unseen, felt, in camouflaged fighting positions and bunkers on every side, NVA troops stood vigilant, prepared less for battle than for inspection. Nang stood erect though deflated, proud yet sly. Instinctively he sensed every hostile presence as if thoughts produced odors and his nose had been sensitized to the smell.

Le Duc Tu and his entourage arrived at 0800. Met Sar arrived at nine. With him were three men Nang had never seen, yet to whom Met Sar seemingly paid homage. Ten minutes later Hen Samon, regional committee chairman of the Khmer Viet Minh, arrived with a squad-sized escort and four functionaries. The Viet Namese greeted all, embracing the Khmers as if they were hosting the meeting in their own country. An NVA staff photographer snapped a dozen pictures. Then the Viet Namese led the Khmers into the hootch, the meeting hut.

Before entering, Met Sar approached Nang. He did not speak to him, nor did he look at the black-clad boy’s cold eyes, but simply stood near him as if he, Sar, were taking a last deep breath of outside air before entering the building. Without motion Nang uttered lowly, “East—twelve APCs with full contingent of troops. Seventy-nine trucks. South—two to four battalions with two A A batteries attached. West—two batteries of rocket artillery. Eleven trucks. Infantry unknown. North—no report.”

For three hours the Krahom guards stood motionless, silent, taking pride in their endurance and vigilance. For three hours not a voice escaped the hut. Dark thunderhead clouds rolled in transforming the clear morning to dull oppressive noon. Colonel Le’s interpreter emerged. Quietly he directed three Viet Namese soldiers to bring food and tea. Politely Nang insisted he be allowed to serve his commanders.

The hut was dim. Four small oil lanterns cast flickering light upon the dozen men seated at two field tables, seated in collapsible chairs; speaking over pinned maps which attempted to recurl. Nang could smell the latent hostility. He poured tea at a small side table, tasted it, served the Krahom personnel.

“The Chinese have sent us sixteen thousand rifles,” the man to Met Sar’s left said. He paused for the Krahom interpreter to translate. “Sixteen thousand,” he repeated. “We’ve received three thousand.”