For the Sake of All Living Things (88 page)

“Good God!” Sullivan had fumed. “Those jackasses. Of course it is. The Cambodians don’t have any idea what the hell they’re doing and they’ve got no one to teach them. No one, because you jackasses have made it illegal.”

Sullivan had banged his fists on the desk, stood, paced. He tried to sit but couldn’t. His stomach was knotted so tight he could barely breathe. He had written twice more to Vathana. Both letters had been trivial, light and, he hoped, attractive. But he had not heard from her. Again there was talk of Neak Luong falling but with the siege and relief of An Loc, fighting about the lower Mekong had tapered off. Still, Sullivan felt he could read the writing on the wall. The Senate report was so damaging. What was the alternative to fighting? he’d thought. Accepting the indiscriminate abuse of power by those totalitarian humanoids passing themselves off as...as what? Nationalists? What could he do to save her? Yes, he thought, he would marry her. He ripped up the letter he’d begun...started again.

Vathana,

Just a few words from the Faulkner book I told you about. I’m sure you’ll like these quotes. “...victory without God is mockery and delusion, but...defeat with God is not defeat.” Also, “...one child saved from hunger and cold is better in heaven’s sight than a thousand slain enemies.”

He is one of America’s greatest writers, yet to me, now, he sounds very Cambodian.

Sullivan paused. He asked himself if he should send those quotes. Was he encouraging her to accept the Khmer Rouge? That was not his intention. How could he attract her? How? How? How? The same corruption which had caused Sihanouk’s downfall was present in the new regime, and after the combat deaths of so many, dissatisfaction with the government had become disgust. And he, John L. Sullivan, represented that government! He returned to the letter, wrote a bit about Lon Nol, his
kbuon
(holy writ), his racism, his rantings over the history of the glories of Chenla the Rich. He changed subjects, wrote about the success in South Viet Nam of dragnet operations against the VC—how his and many other teams had worked into ever-higher echelons of the Communist infrastructure, how they had been able to protect most of the population, how the Viet Cong had been on the verge of collapse and how the present offensive had been partially conceived to reestablish VC strength. But none of it was the letter he wished to send. Such an ache wrenched his gut he could no longer concentrate. I must be with her, he thought. She must come and be with me.

“Another cognac, John,” Rita Donaldson said.

He smiled. She wore thin tropical pants which came to her ankles, but with her legs crossed her ankles showed and the skin radiated a delicious glow. “Sure. Let me get this one.”

“The paper’ll pay for it.”

“Oh. You sure?”

“You really did give it your best shot,” Rita said. “You shouldn’t feel so down. Really. They all took their best shot.”

“Best!”

“Yes. You’ve been very professional.”

“So fucking what?” His voice rose. Immediately he reined it in. “That don’t mean...shit.” He was feeling the alcohol. “What’s important is victory.”

“Victory? John! All that means is another ribbon on your unit flag.”

“It means not defeat.” Sullivan seethed. “Defeat is failure. Failure means...”

“Is that what you’re afraid of? Failing? Your male pride! The ‘can-do’ spin...”

“Failure means slaughter and enslavement. There’s no grade for effort.”

“Maybe it means an end to the killing.”

“You want to stop the killing? Then, damn it, let us win the war.”

Ferns brushed his legs soaking the tattered cloth of his trousers. Rotten limbs snapped dully beneath his barefoot steps. Vines caught him, held him. Branches slapped his face, covering him with their accumulated raindrops and with ants, aphids and small ticks. He, they, had walked for months. Each time they had settled they were told the land was taken and they’d been forced back to the roads, to the forest, finally forced north into the undulating foothills of the Dangrek Mountains—the new wilderness zone.

“Phum 117,” the cadreman announced.

Chhuon looked at the land. Two days earlier he had buried his mother. Before him, before the living vestige of Phum Sath Din, was a broad slope covered with low brush and high bamboo stands. Surrounding the slope was intermittent forest. The land appeared virgin, as if not a single being had ever traversed it. It was not inviting.

“It is a beautiful town, eh?” The cadreman beamed. Behind him his skeleton crew of armed yotheas silently nodded approval. Behind them the bulk of the unarmed militia, the Rumdoahs, quietly acquiesced. Behind them villagers shot furtive glances at one another.

“They said there was a town waiting,” Chhuon said. His voice was clear. The months of walking, settling, waiting, walking again, which had worn down many had been a time of recovery for Chhuon. The Krahom had provided minimal rations for the regained people. There had been no starvation. The Rumdoahs, responsible for direct food distribution and care of the people, were basically honest, basically sincere, basically traditional Khmer. Chhuon’s status as elder, as anti-yuon resister, as one who had endured torture, elevated him to a protected position. On daily marches when rations had not caught up to the column, small gifts of meat—a bird’s breast, a rodent’s leg—or vegetable matter—bamboo shoots, morning glory greens—appeared in Sok’s cooking pot without her seeing the contributor. “ ‘New houses,’ they said.” Chhuon’s words carried back into the column. “ ‘Full granaries,’ they said. Comrade Soth, where are these things?”

“Chairman Cahuom,” Met Soth said softly, “if you open your eyes very wide, you can see the granaries, the houses.” Soth moved closer to Chhuon, spoke even more softly, “don’t be like mister hem or mister ny. for the good of the people. remember, had we left you where you were, everyone would be dead from american bombs.”

As quietly as Soth, Chhuon said, “i remember my mother.”

The old woman had succumbed slowly to the hardships of the march. Over and over she had lamented beneath her breath, “Our ancestors, lost. Our home, lost. Our friends, lost.” For her it had become a marching cadence. “Lost. Lost. Lost.” No hardship is as difficult to bear as the loss of one’s country and for the Khmers of Phum Sath Din the forced relocation was essentially that. “lost. Lost. lost.” Every step represented greater distance between her and her cultural roots, “lost. lost. lost.” The evacuation from her homeland added depression and loneliness to the depression and loneliness of old age. For days she did not eat. Each ounce Chhuon gained his mother lost. Just as his legs became strong enough to negotiate the roads and trails without crutches or cane, her legs deserted her. For several days young men of the column helped her, but each already had a heavy burden and there were but a few who had not been conscripted. “Peou,” Chhuon’s mother called. “Let me hold the little one for a moment.”

“He’s with the children’s group,” Sok told her.

“Just for a little while,” the old woman pleaded feebly. Her face did not contort, her heart did not break, when Chhuon, after beseeching Soth, told her Peou could not come. He was in lessons. “Just for a little,” she mumbled sadly. “Like I used to hold him.” Then she lay down on her side and curled about her youngest grandchild who was not there. The column was at rest. Men gathered firewood, women prepared the rice. Chhuon’s mother stroked Peou’s hair, then snored softly, then ceased. When Chhuon went to wake her she had returned to the corner where the ancestors sit.

“See! There!” Soth pointed toward a bamboo thicket. “There are houses there, eh?”

“Houses?”

“Yes, Mister Chairman. And there. Granaries, eh?”

Chhuon did not answer. Met Nhel stepped to his other side. “I see paddies, there. And there, a
boray
to catch and hold rain and runoff. Those paddies will give two, maybe three crops a year with such efficient irrigation.”

“Now you see it, Mister Chairman, eh?” Soth laid a hand on Chhuon’s arm. His face beamed. “It is a very beautiful town, eh?”

“The soil is poor,” Chhuon said. “It’s mostly clay.”

“You see the village?” Soth demanded.

“A very beautiful town,” Chhuon replied with scorn.

“Now,” Soth ordered. “Build what you see.”

The new Khmer Krahom structure of government which now controlled the regained people of the Northeast, along with the people evacuated from the Northern Corridor, varied little from the KVM structure of the Viet Namese Communists. Names changed. “Provinces” became “areas”; Khet Kampot became Dumbon 35. District names were dropped for numbers; Kompong Trach became District 77. The term for “village” remained’
phum
, and
phums
retained their original names unless relocated, whereupon they too received numbers. Other levels were added: the
krom
or family group, 10 to 15 families, up to 90 people; above the village came the
khum
or canton, a cluster of villages; above that was the
srok
or sector, which in some areas was equal to a small district. Chhuon’s new “town” became Phum 117 of Khum 4, Srok 16, Dumbon 11. And Chhuon officially became 11-16-4-117-1. On paper everything had achieved perfect order.

For weeks the regained people of Phum 117 cleared the land without tools. Hands bled, arms ached. Almost as quickly as they cleared, the underbrush grew back. A single saw blade was secured and the first mutual assistance group, a
krom pravasday
, was established and directed to cut bamboo poles and distribute them directly to the heads of each interfamily unit. “You are the main force driving the revolution,” Soth told the workers. “Follow the Movement and you will master the countryside and own the land.”

Shovels were requisitioned from
srok
level. Fields were laid out, the
boray
was cordoned off with scraps of bamboo driven into the saturated earth like defeated sentinels slumping at irregular intervals. “Build a new mentality,” Soth encouraged the shovelers. “Build a spirit of combative struggle. This is your land, eh, Mister Chairman? Anyone who harms you, who harms your belongings, who harms your phum, he is evil. He is your enemy.”

“...he is my enemy,” Chhuon repeated. He jabbed his spade into the clay, pulled back on the handle. The earth parted, making a long sucking
tthhhth-muk.
Anyone...Chhuon thought. He looked down the line of the lengthening irrigation ditch. It’s past planting time, he thought. There are no seedlings. There will be no harvest. Above them on the slope were a line of family dwellings—simple huts. Anyone who harms you...He lifted the shovel and dropped the contents into an old winnowing basket for the two young girls to take to the dike. Again he jabbed the earth. Amid the dwellings was a small, low, curved hut built on a platform and lashed to four vertical corner poles. It was little more than a woven pup tent, a two-person cocoon. “We’ve no children,” Chhuon had said to Sok. “Peou is with the Liberation Youth Class. Samay...” He shook his head. “We’ve no belongings. All we need is a roof to keep the rain off while we sleep.”

...who harms your belongings...Chhuon thought. I know those words. As he continued to dig he thought of Vathana and Teck and their infant son, Samnang. The thought made the work lighter. Certainly, he thought, Mister Pech has straightened out that young man. From proper seed comes proper behavior. Chhuon thought of his sisters, Voen in Phnom Penh and Moeun in Battambang, of his brother Cheam and Cheam’s wife. Had their mother’s ghost visited them? He had not been able to give her a proper cremation but he felt her soul was neither disoriented nor bewildered. For four years she had been ready to join her husband. He was certain the new state, death, was welcomed. Her soul would adjust easily. She might visit her children, but she’d not frighten them. Not harm them. Still, Chhuon wished he had a white cotton string to wear about his neck for protection.

...who harms your phum...Chhuon thought. I’ve said that myself. On the sixth day of the march Sakhron, the resister who’d fought with Sam and Kpa, had turned himself in to Nhel, Soth and the then still large unit of soldiers. Chhuon had seen him briefly, before a squad heading to the forest. Then never again. Of the others, there had been no word. When they settled and the long column closed up, Chhuon realized that the heads of most of the families had disappeared along with all the quadrant and production team leaders. Only the militia boys seemed intact—though they were isolated from the phum and seldom seen.

...he is evil. He is your enemy. Those are my words, Chhuon thought. I said them to Y Ksar, his boy and Kdeb. Kdeb! Alive! He must be alive!

“Kosol.” Vathana looked back over her shoulder. “Not here,” she said. “Not now.” He had put his hands on her waist and had tried to turn her, to pull her toward him.

“Not now?” the poet said in his deep sad voice. “Always you say, ‘Not now.’ Always I say, ‘When?’ ”

Vathana turned. Kosol backed to the door of the small storeroom. His eyes rested on her bosom, his face drooped in woeful unfulfillment. “Maybe...” She tried to smile sweetly but her face too was pleading—desiring understanding and patience. “Maybe when my shift is over.”

“Tonight! Tonight I speak to the Rivermen’s association.”

“After. Maybe.”

“You love this hospital. You love those who decay.”

“Kosol!”

“You do. And you love that infested puke pit of pitiable people.”

“Kosol! Why...”

“
Why
! Because I love you. You are an angel. I want you to be my angel.”

“I owe you my life. If you hadn’t lifted...”

“Oh, shut up! You don’t owe me. Be with me because I am a man! Because I am me! Me. You like me.”

“Yes. But...”

“But! But Teck, eh? Ah! Some papa, eh?! When was the last time he saw the children? Let me be their papa.”

Vathana dropped her eyes from Kosol’s face. “He comes today,” she said.

Teck was nauseous. The noise of the jet engine above his head, the heat, the overcrowding, the stink of cramped people mixing with the stink and feel of machine oil, the sway of the banking CH-47, of the nylon-webbed seat as the cargo helicopter followed the twisting path down the Mekong toward Neak Luong was, to him, torturous. It seemed there were more than a hundred people on board. Uniformed government soldiers en route to the Neak Luong perimeter, government functionaries making their mandatory inspection trips, whole families—who would they be? who would be authorized to be on the flight?—a few Western aid agency workers, a few Western contractors, two Japanese reporters and that Western guy from the Military Equipment Delivery Team. Ha! Teck thought. The guy would try to see her in the camp. He could fuck her there. He was so predictable. I’ll see her first. At the hospital. Yes, at the hospital, tell her what the khrou said, what our fortune will be. Teck leaned back in the seat, pushed his head back against the nylon strap, cranked his neck so he was looking up at the support structure for the rear turbines. He swallowed hard, tightened his stomach muscles, told himself he must not vomit, must not draw attention to himself, or the long-nose might see him, recognize him. Better, Teck thought, to be just another “Bode.” Bode! Ha! I know. I know what you Americans call us. You see us all as Bodes. That tall-nosed wife humper, too.