For the Sake of All Living Things (55 page)

To those who expressed worry and to those who seemed confused about which element to support, Nang said only, “When the time comes, as it will, death will come to those who oppose us.”

“May I see your pass?”

“Khieng!” Chhuon looked quizzically at the young militiaman. Khieng’s eyes were cold, his manner polite. Chhuon’s voice filled with exasperation. “We’re only three hundred meters from the village.”

“Your pass, Mister Chairman!” Khieng stood stiffly behind his rifle. “Those are my orders.”

“Of me! Yes. I’m sure you’re right.” Chhuon pulled a clear plastic bag from his pocket. He unwound the tie, reached in carefully and arranged the paper, so it lay flat inside. Then he held it out. The lettering, Khmer in script and Viet Namese in block, faced him. “I’m to inspect the fields the soldiers will help plant tomorrow,” Chhuon said.

Khieng grasped the edge of the plastic, pulled it to an angle at which raindrops rolled off into his palm. He studied the upside-down form then muttered, “Okay. But return by the precise time printed.”

Chhuon proceeded down the dike. On the night nine months earlier when San and Chamreum had been killed by fire and water, the demon had taken full control of Chhuon’s mind and Chhuon had not even struggled. That fact alone caused him immeasurable anxiety. Four families had escaped that night, thirteen people in all. True to his word, the next morning Major Nui had had thirty-nine villagers executed before the pagoda. None of the murdered were from the extended Cahuom family and in Chhuon’s mind the strings which bound him to the Viet Namese became cords, the cords ropes. He became sag-mouthed, hopeless, apathetic. Though he still fantasized of escape, he put no stock in the idea. Instead he immersed himself in the meditation: I am a small rock, an indistinguishable stone. With me or without me, what has happened would have happened. I am at most a paving stone keeping Major Nui’s feet from touching mud.

Yet, inside, his entire being was irritated, a rash rubbed raw as if he’d ingested a steel rasp which rampaged within his body at the whim of the demon. The irritation bubbled bile from his stomach burning his throat, had for nine months bubbled fire and agitation, so un-Khmer, so un-Buddhist, his mother and wife no longer tolerated his presence and he sought solace more and more amongst the Viet Namese and Khmer Viet Minh cadremen. Through the harvest season Chhuon had not entered a paddy. Through the dry season no one consulted him. He assisted no one with seed or plow repair, advice or encouragement. At times he’d felt it would be so simple to slave in the paddies and purify his spirit through toil and self-denial as he had after Samnang’s death. But he was afraid his own family would attack him, murder him. The fear prompted his absence which in turn proved to the villagers he’d become one with the new apparatus.

“How easily the chairman tells us, ‘We’re better off today than before liberation,’ ” they told one another. “How easily he says, ‘We must work together as a single production brigade for our community to prosper.’ What has he lost, eh?”

East of Phum Sath Din above the Srepok River, rice paddies stepped gradually up the hillside like a rock garden of slate slabs where the slate is paddy and the cracks between, dikes, hedgerows or treelines. Chhuon slogged barefoot in the rain. The lower fields were replanted and glowed with the iridescent green of new sprouts. In the middle paddies villagers, very young and very old, labored bent-back, scooping holes and sticking in seedlings. Some sang old planting songs but most, unlike in the past when all the teens and single men and women flirted, were silent. The upper paddies which bordered on the forest remained untended. As Chhuon climbed rain collected in his hair and ran down in rivulets across his face and forehead, into his eyes, into his partially opened mouth. Thoughts formed. They’re so clever, he thought. Three armies. Three separate armies. The main force battles the enemy, the area forces control the people, the district militia defends us and now it helps plant the rice. So clever. Separate. The butchers don’t taint the defenders even though all take orders from the same command. Eh! What could I possibly do? What is one pebble in an avalanche?

Chhuon reached the highest paddy, knelt, scooped a handful of mud. It would be best, he thought, to plant different seed here. He worked the soil in his fingers as he’d not done in a year. He grabbed a second handful and squished the red-brown muck feeling a grittiness the lower paddies did not possess. Without fertilizer, he thought, without organic compost, these paddies...He stopped, hesitated, closed his eyes....Still, he thought. In the muck he could feel a life force. Yes. It’s weak but it’s there. Chhuon opened his eyes. The paddy was empty. The next level up had been deforested for another tier but the work had stopped in order to plant the existing fields. Chhuon walked to the edge. No dikes had been built between the deforested land and the upper paddy. Orange streams cut gullies into the stripped land then dumped into the upper paddy and fanned clay silt into a dozen small deltas. Let the soldiers build—His thought began, then abruptly shifted. I could walk up there. I’m authorized. I could go to the edge of the last cut. He crossed a delta and climbed into a rising gully. The field had a peculiar feel to it as if its own tormented spirit still wandered above the land. Chhuon walked on. He walked to the center of the stripped terrace and squatted. The ground had not been plowed and much of it was still covered with years of jungle-floor decay. He spread the surface leaves and twigs. An inch down they were dry even though it had been raining for weeks. He dug farther. The old cover was not as thick as he’d imagined. A hand’s width in, tough roots wove a padded net. He ripped farther. Only two more inches and he exposed a mulch-clay mixture. Another two inches, homogeneous clay. If this washes out...Again his thoughts were interrupted. He looked up. In superstition he half expected to see the tortured spirit of the land, half expected to find a vengeful ghost about to thrash him. The sky was dull gray and close. The lower paddies and village were hidden in the mist. Only the spire of the pagoda gave away the presence of a village. Chhuon turned to the forest. It was too close, too inviting. They’d shoot my last son, he thought. From his squat he saw a flicker of movement in the mist between the trees. He swallowed hard. To run. To freeze. He shifted slowly. Militia, he told himself. Maybe the forest spirit. Resisters. I’ll run and alert Khieng. Tell Hang Tung. Spies. Hang’s or Major Nui’s. I’ll continue my inspection. A steel sliver of pain stabbed his right knee. He cursed quietly. A sudden overwhelming feeling of loss and isolation cloaked him as if he’d been covered by a tarp, snared, enwrapped. He bowed his head. “Kill me,” he wept. “Kill me!” He tore at his hair, ripping out tufts. “Shoot me!” He wailed.

“Uncle!” The voice sounded as if it came from the clouds.

Chhuon turned his head a few degrees. His neck muscles trembled. He cast his eyes to the heavens. “You sent me word,” Chhuon forced a meek pained voice from his throat. “You told me if our bodies toil for them our bodies are enslaved. You told me I am not my body. If my hands, eyes, process their papers, if my mouth passes their orders, my parts are their tools, but I am not my parts. I heard you tell me this. If our hearts embrace their ideology, then we have been enslaved.”

“Uncle!” The voice came clearer, came from the forest.

“Hang Tung?” Chhuon called quietly, tentatively. There was no answer. Chhuon rose slowly. He turned to the forest and thought how terrible it was that the village no longer had incense sticks to light in honor of the spirits. Then an ambiguous smile crept onto his face, a smile half fear, half love. For three years the only traditional act he’d practiced consistently was the feeding of Samnang’s spirit at the family altar. “Kdeb?!” He called the nickname reverently. “Kdeb? Has your spirit found its way home? It’s me, Cahuom Chhuon. Not your uncle. I pray for you every day. I have wanted to tell you of my dream the night before they took you. I want to tell you of the crocodile, the tiger, the water. I’m alone without you. Never should we have gone.” As he spoke he stumbled toward the treeline, his eyes blurry from the fog of emotion. “Kdeb, if it is not the fate of a person to remain alive, we must accept this. Come home to rest.”

“Uncle, here.”

“Who’s there?”

“Kpa.”

“Kpa?!”

“Quiet! Stay there. Pretend to study the soil.”

“Yes.” Chhuon knelt. His mind swirled...“Listen. Keep your head down. Don’t look for me.”

Chhuon dug a hand into the old leaves and thin humus. “It’s been very long,” he whispered.

“Mister Cahuom. We need your help.”

“You’re not hungry tonight?” Hang Tung eyed the village chairman with disgust. Loathsome, he thought. He’s perfect.

“The heat from my stomach...” Chhuon apologized.

“Perhaps the rations are too generous, Uncle.” Chhuon did not answer. “You measured the fields?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve reported the needs to Cadreman Trinh.”

“To the assistant. Trinh Le.”

“Tomorrow the soldiers will join the people. They’ll set an example of order and discipline.”

“Nephew—” Chhuon hesitated. Hang Tung had become increasingly difficult. “Don’t tax the village for those fields at the same rate...”

“You think I set the rate?!” Hang’s voice was sharp with accusation.

Chhuon rushed on. “Those fields won’t produce as the lower paddies. The soil’s thin. There’s not the same nutrients. When we plow the chaff and stalks...”

“Don’t talk to me of that,” Hang Tung snapped. “I’m not a peasant.” His tone changed. “We have some new procedures.”

“Yes?”

“Listen! Memorize! Everyone is needed in the fields. The pagoda is closed until all fields, gardens, orchards and roadways are planted. It’s only temporary. We must do it in order to avoid famine.”

“November’s crop was abundant. Where’s all the...”

“I don’t control the storage of food! Damn you! Why do you accuse me?! Perhaps the rations
are
too generous. Perhaps if they had less, they’d waste less. Or are they giving it to the resisters?”

“What? The people barely...”

“Another thing. From now on this Khmer greeting with the hands,
lei
, humph...It’s banned.”

Chhuon’s mouth fell. Away from the table Sok, Peou and Chhuon’s mother licked the last morsels from their rice bowls. They pretended not to hear. “It’s only a...”

“It will be punished by a cut to half rations.”

“Nephew!”

“There’s more.” Hang Tung’s voice was forced yet forceful like an exhausted parent with a toddler, ready to spank the child at the slightest objection. “Henceforth the army shall be referred to as the Khmer Liberation Movement.”

“The militia or the Viet Na...”

“They are one and the same.”

“May I post these?”

“Of course. Sign the bottom. No. Tell everyone. Tonight.”

“It’s so....”

“More. The Chhimmy families’ homes...”

“New people have moved in...”

“Move them but. The homes will be lent to the families of our heroic People’s Liberation Army officers. And the house of Ny Hy San. Have it whitewashed. Major Nui’s family will occupy that one. Tomorrow we’ll see the major at his headquarters. You’ll have a good report.”

“it’s all i could get away with,” Chhuon whispered.

“we’re very grateful, uncle.”

“kpa...sam, ry’s mother, are they with you?”

“he’s liberated, they took her to the old people’s hospital.”

“what of...”

“i must go. the village is surrounded.”

“kpa...be careful.”

The night was very dark and the rain was heavy. Chhuon’s lantern had been confiscated months earlier. He bumped along slowly, smiled inwardly. He’d done it. He’d given a resister aid. God help me, he thought, if Kpa’s a plant. Ah, yet he’d crossed the line. Just as an individual’s resistance crumbles if he goes against his principles, one’s fear crumbles if he stands by them. It’s easy, Chhuon thought. What had Kpa said, “All one need do is match their flow and live in the spaces between.”

Chhuon knocked on Ny Non Chan’s door. Nimol let him in but she did not greet him. Nor did Chan. Since the night of his brother’s death he had only passed along Chhuon’s orders, never engaging his old friend in either conversation or argument. Chhuon imparted the new orders exactly as he’d been told. Chan snarled, muttered to himself but showed no outward emotion. Look at the pleasure, Chan thought, the son of...no, he’s no son. His father’s spirit must cry in pain to see him.

“Shall I whitewash my brother’s home in the rain?” Chan asked without emotion.

“I was told only to have it whitewashed,” Chhuon answered.

“And the major’s wife, will she arrive soon?”

“I was not told.”

“And if I don’t.”

“Chiet!”

“Chiet?!”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“You don’t use the Khmer word any longer, Mister Chairman? Now you speak in Viet Namese?”

Chhuon hesitated. The accusation weighed heavily, its weight seeming to fall on the skin below his eyes, pulling, pushing his features into a mask of sorrow. “Dear Brother”—Chhuon bowed to the vice-chairman, bowed with his hands high and together—“what I do, I do to protect our village. I do to protect the people. Please, I beg you, I beseech you, appease the”—Chhuon dropped his voice, quickly looked about—“appease the yuon crocodiles. We have no way to...”

“Yes, Mr. Chairman. You’ve demonstrated your capacity to kiss the hole from which they pass gas. It was what my brother saw before
chiet
!”

The jungle tunnel came upon them suddenly. Chhuon didn’t see the entrance until the front of the vehicle crashed against the curtain of living vines. “It’s time you understood, Uncle.” Hang Tung chuckled strangely, a laugh Chhuon had never heard from him.

“Why does the major want me?” Chhuon asked nervously.

The concealed road was smooth, well maintained. After the rough twelve-kilometer stretch of Highway 19, it seemed to Chhuon as if he’d entered a different world. Before Hang answered Chhuon asked, “Has Phum Nako been evacuated? Are the craters from American bombs? Why do we tear down the forest to make paddies while all these lie fallow? What kind of gun is that in the trees? Is that a hospital? Are you sure...”