For the Sake of All Living Things (84 page)

Not twice. Once then fifteen hours then twelve then eighteen then nine.

He slept. The sound of an immense though distant blast woke him. He sat up. Looked for the pinhole but saw nothing but black. He felt his calves and ankles. Once muscular his legs had thinned while he’d been chairman, had atrophied while he’d been shackled. He lay back. There was scurrying about the pagoda. Then silence. He listened more carefully, listened for hours. A faint glow shone above. When it had first come he did not know. He’d missed its gradual appearance. For that he chastised himself. He wouldn’t have another chance until the next dawn to...

“Murdered,” Chhuon heard someone whisper.

“How?”

“In his sleep.”

“By a bodyguard?”

“Trinh Le arrested them all. Nouk says they deny it. Now there are the trucks across the bridge.”

The conversation passed. Chhuon strained to hear more but there was nothing. A moment later he heard a guard rant that none of the radios worked. Then again silence. No one came with his morning ration. To Chhuon it confirmed his erratic schedule theory. He felt in the dark for his bucket. When his fingertips tapped it he withdrew his hand then laughed to himself. Things have sunk pretty low, he thought, when you feel for a bucket of shit for security. Perhaps, he thought, to laugh aloud will get them to open the door. He began to laugh loudly, laugh about his friend the bucket of shit, but the stentorian outburst was only in his mind. When the guards did not respond he thought about the noise and considered the classic paradox, if no one hears it is it still noise? Then the corollary hit him: if one person hears a noise that’s not been made, is that still a sound? Ha! He chuckled delightedly, filling his entire mind with laughter and music and then with visions to accompany the sound. An entire gathering, family, friends, relatives from distant cities all milling around beside the wat and along the beautiful stretch that dropped to the river. He emerged and smiled and bowed and one by one they greeted him with graceful, respectful
leis.
In the dark he raised his hands returning the salutation. Then in graceful arcs he brought his arms to his sides. One finger, just the nail, ticked the bucket and the reverberation blasted across his mind, destroying the laughter, the music, the images. He lay back and wept.

Real noises from outside did not reach him or he did not register or record them. As Nang’s 104th overran the hospital complex to the east and as Von’s 81st ambushed two small squads coming to assist and a third, a transportation detail carrying dead and wounded from Plei Ku, the Krahom 71st and 24b Battalions led by Met Ung and Met Sol respectively parked three Soviet six-by-six transport trucks by the small bridge that spanned the Srepok. Chhuon’s laughter upon learning the story would astonish the still-proper village elders. For all his sophistication, for all his yuon learning, Cadreman Trinh—in charge of a village whose chairman was imprisoned, whose senior committee member had just been assassinated and whose senior officer, the province commander for political affairs, Colonel Nui, was absent—Trinh ordered the Trojan horse hauled into his fort.

Later, when Chhuon finally heard the entire story, he would be generous in his estimate of Trinh’s abilities. With Hang Tung dead Trinh had arrested the Khmer bodyguards. Then, fearing Khmer reprisals, Trinh had had his small contingent of Viet Namese soldiers quietly, sector by sector, disarm the Khmer militia. Then the trucks, with NVA markings, had been reported and reconnoitered. The top crates were full of arms. In the village, all the radios had been sabotaged. Trinh did not know about the regional fighting, about the Krahom attacks on Khmer Viet Minh villages. When two platoons of seemingly lost black-clad youths emerged from the trucks, Trinh was completely confused. Then an additional force of yotheas appeared at the village gate. With the two Krahom platoons in their midst, with most of the village defense force disarmed, the remaining militia and the Viet Namese allowed entrance to these anti-FANK, anti-U.S. soldiers. Phum Sath Din did not resist. It did not “fall without a fight.” It welcomed the guerrillas. Trinh accepted them as an allied force. The people, Khmer and Viet, and the leaders had no knowledge of Angkar’s intention.

Chhuon’s cell door opened. The light blast was blinding. It was noon. “Mister Cahuom Chhuon?”

Chhuon answered but he was unable to control his voice and the sound came garbled.

“Cahuom Chhuon, Chairman of Phum Sath Din?”

“Ay” was all Chhuon was able to squeeze out.

His eyes had not yet adjusted. He could not see the speaker. “I am Met Nhel, Commander of the Northern Zone Task Force of the Kampuchean Patriots Liberation Front.” The voice approached. Several fuzzy figures passed through the lighted doorway. One unlocked the ankle shackles. “Come with me, please.”

Chhuon clamped his eyelids shut then opened them. The man in the doorway looked huge until two others gently lifted him, Chhuon, to standing. Then, to Chhuon, Nhel seemed to shrink. Nhel backed into the hall. “There is some confusion as to your status.”

Chhuon’s legs seemed detached as he attempted to walk. The muscles of his buttocks would not coordinate with the motion of his feet. One cheek twitched in spasm, the spasm carried up, across to his anal sphincter. Chhuon hopped and wobbled as a person might whose legs had been injected with novocaine and who was having a stick shoved up his ass.

“Our records,” Nhel said, attempting to ignore Chhuon’s grotesque motions, “do not indicate your resistance work, yet local members and your evident incarceration vouch for your patriotism.”

Nhel lead Chhuon to the porch of the pagoda where he and Ngoc Minh had set up their command post. As Chhuon’s eyes adjusted to the light he saw six dozen men, boys and girls—the village Khmer militia force—sitting in the sun on the dusty main road, their elbows wired together behind their backs. At one end he recognized Heng and Khieng. Both were bruised. About the prisoners were nine black-clad boys with red-checked kramas. All carried assault rifles. Closer, on the porch, the stairs, surrounding the wat, was an entire platoon; farther, in the quadrant where the Viet Namese dependants had moved into the old Chhimmy family abodes, Khmer boys were roughly extracting the foreigners, pushing the women and children up the alleys away from the village center.

“Please sit,” Nhel said to Chhuon. Chhuon attempted to settle in a chair but halfway down his legs collapsed, his butt caught the seat edge and he splayed like a water drop falling on the deck. Two aides righted him and the chair and sat him respectfully. At the west end of the street another squad marched several Khmers toward the pagoda. To the north there were shots.

Nhel hefted Chhuon’s file. He pursed his lips. The shooting seemed to bother him. A yothea came and reported that all the communal rice had been confiscated. Nhel rubbed his face. Chhuon, caught by a wave of vertigo, wobbled, began to fall forward out of the chair. The yothea caught him by the shoulders. “Are you ill, Grandfather?”

“Please, let me sit there.” Chhuon indicated the floor.

As the soldier lowered him, Nhel said, “See that every Khmer family has enough for the journey.”

“See to your brothers first,” Ngoc Minh injected. “Be sure no food is left for other forces.”

“This is very difficult.” Nhel returned to Chhuon. “Very complex. The resistance heroine, Neang Thi Sok, she is your wife?”

“Heroine! Sok!” Chhuon’s face cracked into smile, then broke and beamed in laughter.

“Perhaps you prefer the cell,” Ngoc Minh said.

Chhuon tried to force the ridiculously broad smile from his face but could not totally hide it.

“Are we funny to you?” Ngoc Minh scowled.

“No! No! It is I am so delighted you are here.” Chhuon took a deep breath. “Sok. Yes. She is my wife but I hid my resistance from her. She’s not capable...”

“She’s a heroine of the Khmer Patriots,” Ngoc Minh snapped in his harsh, dour manner. “You, Chairman, on the other hand, have colluded with stinging red ants to sell your country. Your traitorous behavior...”

Chhuon bowed his head. Nhel interrupted. “Yet they charged you with being head of the resistance.”

“You must”—Ngoc Minh came closer—“write out all your activities. Start with the day you sold your son to the yuons. Put him in the cell.”

Across the village street a Viet Namese woman shrieked. Two children, five or six, ran from a house toward the wat. Four yotheas were in the alley. As the first child reached the street a yothea guarding the militia soldiers pounced on him, knocked him flat, then bashed in his skull with the butt of his rifle. The second child skidded to a halt. The mother shrieked wildly. Swore. A guard grabbed the second child by the neck, lifted her and threw her into a house wall. The mother ran a step toward her children and was shot in the back.

Chhuon watched, horrified. Another incident broke out in a cross alley, out of sight, identical of sound.

Chhuon heard his voice demand, “What son did I sell?”

“Samnang. Cahuom Samnang. You sold him to the yuons in August 1968. Angkar knows. Angkar saved him.”

“Samnang! Sam...” Chhuon’s voice trailed off. Then, “he’s alive?” Then loudly, “Kdeb is alive!
Alive
!”

All afternoon screams and small arms fire and the smell of smoke penetrated the walls of Chhuon’s cell. He was again shackled but the door was not closed. He had been given a ballpoint pen and a spiral notebook. In it, as he recorded his memories, tears of joy splashed on the pages. Again and again and again his mind shouted
alive! alive!
Oh, to see him again, Chhuon whispered inside, whispered even within his own mind for fear that the wish, the desire, the passion would damn itself, yet he was unable to control the passion.
Alive!
Oh, to touch him. He’ll seek me out. I must go on. I must find him.

The next afternoon Chhuon was led back through the wat to the porch. There, hanging from the porch roof support beam, by the neck, were Trinh, Trinh Le, and fourteen others—the quadrant chairmen, the heads of the women’s and the farmers’ associations, and the leaders of various production teams. Beyond, half the homes of Phum Sath Din had been destroyed as if a whirlwind had ripped a swath of destruction across the village. No one, other than a few yotheas, was to be seen. Chhuon’s face collapsed, his heart wrenched. He gasped, clenched his teeth.

“Come on, Grandfather,” the yothea who led him said gently.

“Where?” Chhuon’s voice was weak. “We must catch the others.”

“Why have you ruined my town?”

“To keep the yuons from having it, Grandfather.”

“And all the people?”

“They’ll be given new homes in the liberated zone.” The boy helped Chhuon down the steps. “I’m sorry for the village, Grandfather,” the boy said respectfully. “The older troops, the ones who have been with Angkar, they are very enthusiastic. Most of us would never treat the people such. Most of us...” The boy’s eyes watered. He did not attempt to hide the tears.

Chhuon’s voice came hoarse. “I understand, Nephew.”

“You must learn, Grandfather.” The boy looked away. “Hear nothing. See nothing. Say nothing.”

At the bottom of the steps Chhuon turned and looked at the hanging dead.
Alive!
he told himself. Kdeb is alive. I must be alive too to find him.

Nang stared at the small, well-kept Angel House on the post. He had not seen another standing in the Northeast, yet this one not only survived but was in impeccable condition. Beyond it the modest home had been destroyed; one wall and half the roof were caved in, the large hearth of the kitchen was dismantled and the bricks shattered and strewn. Nang stood listless.

For two days his 104th Battalion had attempted to overrun the final bunkers of the headquarters complex only to have each assault frustrated by heavy NVA return fire. Then came the first small counterattacks, then reinforcements that had evaded Von’s 81st and its contingent of local resisters. “Ours is not to hold terrain,” Eng had cautioned him. “Ours is to strike, to destroy as much as possible, to withdraw and preserve our forces, and to protect the people.”

By 15 April 1972 most of the hill towns of the Northeast had been evacuated. Nang’s 104th fell back, allowing a small contingent of NVA to emerge and chase them until they, the Viet Namese, outran their covering fire and the 104th reversed and slaughtered all but two who fled back to the command bunker, and by their chaotic and frenzied reports gave the Krahom 104th and 81st time to withdraw, to sweep backwards, pillaging, looting and burning, retreating but ready to fight as rear guards but never again being hit. As the KK swept back, they left a wasted, barren, depeopled buffer zone.

On the seventeenth, at the outskirts of Phum Sath Din, soldiers of the 104th stumbled into a mass grave—a heap of unburied bodies piled two meters high and covering an area seven meters long. Nang was notified. He came and took great pleasure in the sight and the touch. Two hundred bodies were piled atop one another. He flipped the body of a young woman as if he were flipping bags of trash looking for one in which he’d perhaps misplaced something of value. A cheap plastic cigarette lighter fell from her clothes. He snatched it up and jammed it into his pocket. Then from the depths of the pile came a low moan that slowly rose through the dead. Others searched for gold rings or necklaces, oblivious to the sound. Nang looked into the trees. The leaves were still. The moan grew louder. “Ahk!” He forced a laugh and a smile. “If I know Met Nhel, not an earring hidden in an asshole has been left.”

Nang entered the village where he’d been born and raised. About him yotheas were picking through homes, confiscating anything moveable, destroying anything uncarryable. He did not stop to join his strugglers in their frolicking. He marched past the pagoda where bodies hung like sides of beef in a meat locker and where other fighters were desecrating the statues and scrolls.

Without thought Nang walked to the southwest quadrant, to the home of the Angel House. He stared at what he considered a hideous and archaic icon from an unenlightened time. Still he did not destroy it. Oddly, as if touched by déjà vu, he glanced about for the small pickup truck that should have been parked right where he stood. He looked for the little girl and her brother who should have been playing in the orchard or in the small courtyard. Nang sidestepped to better view the home. The entry door had been ripped from its hinges and the stairs to the threshold had been overturned. He summoned the energy to approach. Though it took no energy it took all his energy; though it took no courage, it was the most difficult path he’d walked; though he sauntered forward lackadaisically, almost apathetically, his inner fight was full-scale mayhem.