For the Sake of All Living Things (97 page)

In the months after the rains ceased, Phum 117 of Khum 4, Srok 16, had become a strategic cooperative. Beneath each family hut of Chhuon’s interfamily group a digging team had burrowed into the earth, forming an S-shaped tunnel leading to a small cubicle. Around each set of
krom
huts an interior defensive perimeter had been built. About the phum as well as about the entire khum, fences and the belt of minefields and booby traps had been widened and improved. Everything was in perfect order. Seen from above the fortifications were symmetrical.

The
kana khum
, Met Ravana, did not speak. Before him sat every inhabitant of Phum 117. Every head was bowed. Maturing in the liberated zone was a system of checks without balances that ensured that every boy and girl, every man and woman, was constantly under surveillance, continuously watched by every other person about him or her. Anyone could report on anyone else. Anyone could claim that so-and-so had anti-Movement or antirevolutionary thoughts or said anti-yothea words, or behaved in an
anti-phum
manner. Without being able to face the accuser, the accused was automatically guilty, could be automatically punished. The result was a total breakdown of the normal fabric of Khmer society. In the name of “liberation,” in the name of “the people,” guilt was impressed on every psyche. Sanctimonious double-talk combined with totalitarian rule destroyed traditional social networks. The organized and “scientifically” planned transformation of the culture destroyed, as did other factors in government zones, Khmer resilience.

Throughout March and April 1973 the Krahom offensive against the heartland intensified. From the hinterlands Angkar had called as many yotheas as possible. They’d vacated the liberated lands in waves, leaving the liberated peoples in the hands of Rumdoah troops overseen by but an aroma of hardened yotheas. As the offensive blasted huge holes in FANK’s capital defenses, Allied bombers reached out to crush supply lines and rear bases. Convoys and fortifications were targeted.

Three weeks before this meeting of Phum 117, Sok had been quietly preparing the evening rice when without a half second’s notice the growling roar of three government T-28s shook the village.
Lap kats
(
slap kats,
or sawed-off wings) swept in fast, so low that had she had a long-handled rice knife she’d have been able to split the plane’s belly. Then instantly they were gone and napalm fires roared and consumed the family-group huts beside theirs. Chhuon, on his spindly bowed legs, had run to her and pulled her. She’d frozen like Lot’s wife. Flames sucking for air, heat rising, forming small tornados, had whipped the earth about them into a dust storm. Still Sok had stood agape. Then, later, huddled in their tiny bunker room, she’d collapsed sobbing, calling the names of her mother and father and of the seven children she’d borne—four dead, three lost. Hopelessness had engulfed her like black billowing napalm smoke.

“We are lost,” she’d cried. “Lost. We are no one. We are nothing. We are without family. We cannot even use our family names!”

“Someday,” Chhuon had tried to console her, “someday, when the war is over, when we’re truly liberated...”

A week later Khum 4 had again been bombed. This time a nighttime arc-light drop had unleashed its violent pent-up hate at the edge of the canton, the high explosives blowing iron shrapnel out hundreds of meters, ripping through huts and humans, punishing the land and any inhabitants who dared be on it. The next day a third punitive strike, American F-105s, had hit the commune, killing, destroying the dikes, a
boray
, some just-plowed fields which would have grown rice to support Angkar’s troops, fields Chhuon saw as his fields, his future food. Chhuon’s will had weakened. Then came the quiet days when the bombers moved south onto the points of attack or east against supply trails laden with trucks. Still he, Sok, so many, slept nights in their airless bunkers or slept in fields as far from their huts as the defensive rings about the commune would allow.

“Sihanouk is near.” Met Than, the straight-haired
mekong
, had whispered one evening to Chhuon and a group replowing and reflattening a paddy for the May planting.

“Who says?” a survivor of a devastated phum had asked.

“Everyone,” Than whispered. She too was depressed by the bombings, by the
phum’s
,
khum’s
,
srok’s
, by every level’s inability to retaliate. “A
mekong
from 116 told me.”

“Who needs him?” the survivor had snapped.

“But...” a third man said, his voice trembling, “...he is our...savior.”

Chhuon had bitten down hard, had pushed harder on the three-man bamboo bar from which the ropes trailed to the plow. The survivor had snorted. “Sihanouk’s been infected with yuon disease.”

Each day Chhuon had withdrawn more. The terror of the bombings, different from any terror he’d ever known, so remote, so unreachable, frightened him to his core in a way physical torture had never been able. He understood torture. He understood pain. He understood pain’s infliction. But the bombings. Those he did not understand. Their sudden onslaught, intense violence, sudden cessation. All from such a distance it might as well have been the moon exploding. One night he’d written in his notebook: “They say Samdech Euv is near, but the bombings keep him from returning. Perhaps Kdeb is with him.”

Now, to call the meeting to order, Met Ravana clapped his hands. Near Sok a woman’s bowels shuddered in terrified spasms and the smell of shit wafted across the cowering people. “All
krom
leaders,” Ravana shouted, “
stand
!” Chhuon and three others shot up. “You are charged with the responsibility of the order. Sit.” Chhuon dropped, thudded onto the dusty ground. Slowly the words crept from Ravana’s mouth, then gradually accelerated: “You will dig in. All movement will be by orders. Only. All aliens are subject to ultimate measures. Anyone not from Khum 4 is an alien. You will work for the Revolution. All material things belong to the Revolution. You may not talk, you may not pray, you may not smile. Your energy belongs to the Revolution. Talking, praying, smiling sap energy. Every infraction will be reported.”

The smell of shit reached Ravana. His face contorted. Then his eyes glinted. A flat smirk broadened his jowl. “You have heard that Norodom Sihanouk is near, eh?” He felt repulsed by the continuing smell. “If yes, stand.” A few stirred but no one stood.
“Stand! Everyone!”
The nearly four hundred people rose. Ravana walked into their midst. He walked between the silent rows, pacing, disgusted, following his nose. Then, “Are you ill, comrade?”

“N...n...n...”

“Don’t be afraid,” he said calmly. “Go with those yotheas. They will escort you. In case of a bombing.”

The woman who’d soiled herself left. Ravana strode back to the small one-step-high stage.
“Sit!”

His eyes shifted. Still the smell lingered. “Turn yourselves over to Angkar to be rebuilt. Trust in Angkar, in the Movement, in the Revolution. Sihanouk was corrupt. Sihanouk was despicable. Sihanouk was oppressive.” Ravana paused. Chhuon’s eyes were locked on his. “You will launch an offensive to gain great victories of rice production to sustain the army and to defend our independence against imperialists and monarchists.” Chhuon thought of Met Than and her whispered news of Samdech Euv. This denunciation, this level of denunciation, was new to the “liberated and regained peoples.” It marked the transition from physical relocation to political reeducation. Why? Chhuon tried to think. Ravana ranted on. “Our goal is pure and classless humanity unencumbered by the dogma and doctrine of false gods and false civilizations.” The bombing, Chhuon thought as the
kana khum
raged, it has dislodged their fears. They are weak. They are vulnerable. “...in cities civilization is born, grows. In cities civilization differentiates between people, and that begets classes. Cities must be destroyed...” What stops something from reaching in and annihilating them? Chhuon thought. They are afraid! The thought amazed him. They are more afraid even than I am. They don’t believe their own words. It’s fear that induces in them this fanaticism—fear of revenge against them, fear of...

Again Met Ravana was ranting against Norodom Sihanouk. “...to speak that name, henceforth, will be punishable by death...” No, Chhuon thought, I must not have heard correctly. Without moving his head he attempted to force his eyes far enough sideways to seek Sok’s reaction. He could not see her.

So afraid, his thoughts began again. Then he saw Met Than, saw her short straight hair neatly combed, saw the even bangs lapping at her eyebrows, saw her clouded eyes. It did not register. It could not be. Than was one of them. She was there, before him, a head on a board, there without her body. Met Ravana slapped the head and it flew from the board into the midst of shrieking women. Chhuon swallowed. He thought, awkwardly, How, how, how did I do that?! And then he knew, was certain, without thought, that he, like Sok, like them all, was unalterably trapped in a commune of his own making.

In June there had been six nocturnal meetings in Phum 117; in early July, none. As B-52s were unleashing their ordnance about Phnom Penh and Neak Luong, the liberated commune in the far North was slowly recovering. The hopelessness and depression of April, the feeling of being incompetent in the new ways, had ebbed. The tension of May, the continual fear of being a bomb target, abated. And the horror of June’s night sessions faded in the constant forced labor. Even Sok, though daily she still muttered “We are lost,” seemed to have finally acclimated to the order of Angkar.

“A little more, eh?” Chhuon’s voice resounded in the pelting grayness of an early July rain. “Raise it higher,” he shouted. The water in the seedbed rose steadily until it was a finger’s width from the tips of the rice seedlings. “Ah. Close it,” Chhuon yelled up to his helpers. “Let’s move on to the next.” In the larger fields below the seedbeds men dragged logs over the furrowed mud, flattening the earth in preparation for planting the seedlings. “That’s it,” Chhuon called. “Open it for this feeder.” Water from the small
boray
gushed into the trench which led to the seedbed where Chhuon now stood. The operation was efficient, the water moved swiftly. Chhuon smiled, then remembering it was criminal to smile, cleared his face. Still he felt happy, pleased that the new agricultural layout was working, pleased at how perfectly the rain had fallen, at how beautifully the seedlings were growing, at how straight were the dikes and how level were the feeder ditches and at how well the water-control teams and the log teams worked. Only the memory of Than, the
mekong
who’d let him build a proper system but who’d been beheaded for speaking the old monarch’s name, only that thought dampened his spirit this wonderfully rainy morning.

Since the rain had begun in earnest, there had been no bombings. At first Chhuon had thought the planes couldn’t fly in the heavy rain, but he knew that wasn’t the case. Then he’d thought that the aerial detection men must have finally realized that Phum 117, Khum 4, was not a fortification or a training camp but only a peasant commune trying to raise enough rice on which to subsist. He knew nothing of the great bombings about Phnom Penh and the lesser bombings at Kompong Cham, Neak Luong and to the west at Siem Reap. Things were looking up. Even the local cadre had eased off. As long as the work progressed steadily, as long as everyone labored hard, they were being left alone.

“Let’s go,” Chhuon called to the two men who’d opened and redammed the spillways to the various seedling paddies. “Well done, Sichau.” Chhuon’s voice was clear. “Well done, Moeung.”

Quietly Moeung said, “You’d best call us ‘Met,’ Chairman Chhuon. There may be ears in the paddies.”

Chhuon did not pause or acknowledge the warning. “Let us spell Team Four. They’ve pulled the log all day. Let’s show them what three old men can do, eh?”

Chhuon’s enthusiasm infected Sichau but the fever, like all enthusiasm in Phum 117, was low grade. Soon, as the three skinny men—Chhuon now fifty, the other two in their mid forties—on their six spindly legs with the six bulbous knees well displayed beneath their rolled-up trousers—pulled the log, they were puffing and panting and only occasionally talking.

“Chhuon...” Moeung blew words out one per breath, “I...heard...Soth...he’s...replaced...by...Ravana.”

“Eh?” Chhuon puffed back.

“My wife...” Sichau spoke more smoothly than the others, “...she says...she heard from the
mekong
...we are to raise...to the next level...of community.”

“What...” Chhuon did not turn but continued pushing on the bamboo pole—“...does that...mean?”

“Eh...” Sichau said. “...tonight we’ll hear.”

Chhuon, Sichau, Moeung, all the new and old peasants of Phum 117, didn’t know what event triggered that night’s reeducation session and the new harsh reprisals. But some cadre knew; some were held accountable. Fifty kilometers south-southwest in the direction of Kompong Thom, in the absence of a strong force because so many Khmer Krahom yotheas had been sent to the front, forty thousand “liberated” peasants had escaped to government lines.

“It is the most severe crime...” Ravana addressed the men workers of Phum 117. They had not been permitted to return to their huts; they had not eaten. Torches had been brought to the field Chhuon had been dragging at dusk. “...in the eyes of Angkar. Anyone attempting to escape will be arrested, tried and taken away. Why should anyone wish to leave? Angkar provides for everything. Angkar cares for all. Angkar is good.

“Are you curious? What’s next door? There”—Ravana pointed north into the night—“there is a commune of monks. There they learn to become productive members of the community; they are taught to earn their own way.” He ranted for an hour then was quiet for some time, then he left. He did not dismiss them. All night they sat in the field. One by one the torches burned out. The rain came at times hard, at times gently. When the rain was softest the omnipresent metronome of crickets lulled the men toward sleep. Yet all feared sleeping, for sleeping during a meeting might be a crime. Sichau’s head drooped onto Chhuon’s shoulder. He snapped it up. Another torch burned out. He laid his head against Chhuon and fell asleep. On the other side Moeung did the same, turning slightly so the back of his shoulder was to Chhuon’s back. Chhuon moved slightly so the three formed a tripod. At first he could not sleep. He pondered one line Ravana had repeated several times: “...though our rice farmers were greatly oppressed and are now free, they must still learn a proper agricultural worker’s nature. They must be instilled, via socialist ideals, with a working-class spirit....”