For the Sake of All Living Things (116 page)

“Humph!” Nem left to report to the commune’s enforcer.

“vathana,” Voen whispered. It was their first of almost five hundred nights, “your father left a message for you.” Vathana’s body trembled. Dry sobs wracked her once-beautiful face, “you must live, little niece.”

“auntie, where is papa?”

“they sent him to site 169.”

“and mama?”

“i will tell you all, but first you must hear your father’s words.”

“yes.”

“ ‘you must live to tell our story and the story of our people to the whole world.’ he told me to make you promise that.”

“i promise.”

“for our people, vathana.”

“i promise.”

“i’ve hidden his notebooks, get them to thailand. he’s been disappeared.”

“There’s a letter for you. From Washington,” his father said over the phone.

“An official one?” he asked.

“No, John. Personal. Looks personal. That’s why we didn’t open it. Looks like a woman’s hand. Return address says, R. Donaldson. Want me to forward it or are you coming home for Christmas?”

“I’ll be home, Pop.”

“Good. It’s not right for you to stay away like this.”

“I work, you know. For Mr. Pradesh. I’m essentially the ranch manager. It’s hard to get away.”

“What kind of name is that, anyway?”

“Pradesh? Indian. He...”

“Indian?! That doesn’t sound like any Indian name I know.”

“India Indian. He’s a political exile.”

“Ah, well, you come home for Christmas, okay? I’ll keep the letter till you’re here.”

John Sullivan went home for Christmas 1975. He arrived on Wednesday, the twenty-fourth, perfunctorily visited aunts, uncles, cousins, with his parents, sister and brother-in-law. He felt weird, out of it, as if he’d become an alien, but he kept it to himself. On his mind was Rita’s letter and ranch business and his independent studies—nothing he felt he could share with his father or sister or any of the others. Christmas morning and through dinner Margie and Bob remained polite yet distant. By noon his Uncle Gus was drunk and wanted John to join him. His mother became furious but she too bottled it up. The day passed as holidays do. On the morning of the twenty-sixth he packed his one bag, carried it to his jeep, then went back in, made coffee and waited for his father to come down.

“Predesh, you say?” Henry Sullivan sat with his son.

“Pradesh,” John corrected.

“Indian?”

“Um-hum.”

“Them and the Arabs and the Japs are buying all the farms in this county. That’s gotta stop.”

“I don’t know,” John said. “I know Mister Pradesh runs the place better than the guy that had it before.”

“Humph!”

“Look, Pop, I don’t want to argue. There’s nothing I can say—or do—that makes sense to any of you here. Some of it doesn’t make sense to me.”

Henry Sullivan squeezed his coffee cup. A thin wisp of white vapor swirled over the dark liquid. “John,” he said. It was difficult for him to find the words. He looked at his son. “There’s nothin you can say, or do, that’ll keep us...that’ll...you’ll always be our son. You know that? Whether you’re three or thirty, understand?”

“Thanks, Pop. Maybe, just now, it’s better for me to be a few miles away.”

“Maybe. But...John, don’t be away because you think no one agrees with you. That sister of yours and her husband, they don’t think for all of us. Look, you go back to this Mister Pradesh. If that’s what you want, be the best ranch manager there ever was. And...John...I’m fifty-seven...I...I, ah, got this letter for you from R. Donaldson. Do you have a girl out there on the ranch?”

“No.” John laughed. “Not at the moment, Pop. There’s a few women in town but no one I’m interested in.”

“Who’s this?” Henry took the letter from his shirt pocket. The envelope was cream colored, the script neat. He passed it to his son.

John looked at it a moment, gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to open it before his father. He had no idea what it might contain. “She was a reporter in Cambodia,” John said. “A real hard-nosed bitch.”

“Why’d she write?”

“Beats me.”

“Well, open the damned thing.”

John slid the handle of his teaspoon beneath the flap, cleanly broke the glue. He glanced at the few lines, then read them aloud to his father. “ ‘John, if this reaches you, contact me. As you predicted, terrible things are happening in Cambodia. No one wants to hear about it. I would like your help in relieving what misery we can. You were the best ‘advisor’ I ever met there. Situation desperate. Let me send you our reports.’ ”

The note was signed, simply, “Rita.” Beneath the signature was written, “Director, Cambodian Crisis Relief.”

Six weeks into the new year, John Sullivan received a packet, via his father, from Cambodian Crisis Relief. He had not answered Rita’s letter. The packet seemed to be the rough draft of a yet-to-be-released report. Copies of news clippings with comments written in the margins were attached.

The Khmer Rouge victory of 17 April 1975 has ushered in a new age, one which Khmers call
peal chur chat
, a sour and bitter time. It has not brought peace.

Sullivan dropped the packet on the coffee table in his small living room. He did not want to read it. He did not want to remember anymore. Indeed, he felt he had been quite successful at putting the memories, the bitterness and pain, behind him. He grabbed his jacket. There were fence lines to be checked, feed to be distributed. The words of the report stared up at him.

Phnom Penh’s nearly three million inhabitants were herded from the capital only hours after Khmer Rouge soldiers entered...

All towns! Sullivan said to himself. All? Those slimy scumbags.

...bloodbaths...all officers of the old army, down to second lieutenant, are being executed....

Three hundred thousand! Sullivan sat on the cheap convertible sofa behind the coffee table. Bloodbaths...! How many...how many times did I tell them...? Sullivan stood abruptly, shot an arm into one sleeve of his jacket.

Though these reports have been at least partially substantiated...that is, figures indicating half this number of deaths have been verified...President Ford, according to Press Secretary Ron Nessen, is “disturbed” by the confirmation of the execution of eighty to ninety of Lon Nol’s officers and their wives. Is it any wonder America isn’t outraged? Is it any wonder America has barely noticed these atrocities? Even the president of the United States has hardly mentioned the slaughter of perhaps 10,000 unarmed human beings in that tiny country
each day.

Sullivan sat, read the report. Then he reread it. He could no longer ignore what was happening on the far side of the earth, nor on the East Coast of his own country. His first response was anger. To Rita Donaldson he wrote.

You know this Cambodian Crisis Relief of yours...Do you know who was, who used to be Cambodian Crisis Relief? Me! That was my job. It seems to me some people put major obstacles in my path, some people kept me from helping the people of Cambodia. Now they ask for my help!

He did not send that note, but ripped it to shreds. He began again, tore up the pages again. He left, checked the fences, gritting his teeth the whole time. His stomach felt empty. In the evening, back in his room, he pored over the report. He pondered the meanings, projected the ramifications. For two days, as he rode to distant grazing areas to check feed supplies for the cattle, his anger built. Then he drove to town to begin a search for materials he might purchase, bring back to the ranch and study. For weeks he read, bringing to his study the same dedication and intensity he’d brought to his study of physics and organic chemistry. Finally, in March 1976 he wrote an impersonal response to Rita Donaldson.

Do we need a new definition of peace, a new theoretical construct?
In the American mind it is not non-peace if a nation slaughters its own people. War and Peace are not the only alternatives. The paradigm needs expansion, otherwise incidents drop into categories which stimulate inappropriate responses. Holocaust is not peace! Genocide is not peace! Pogroms and gulags are not peace! Reeducation camps are not peace! Slavery is not peace! Fine! Stay out of other nations’ internal affairs—but when does a government lose its legitimacy? When does it forfeit its right to rule/represent/ serve its people? When does a neighbor have the right or the responsibility to stop the guy next door from abusing his child? Does a person from Massachusetts have the right to protest a Texas legislative action which upholds capital punishment?
Why?
Is there a line, and if so, when and how is crossing it justifiable?

That Phnom Penh was evacuated is, it seems to me, now well known and well documented. That it was
not
the first of the evacuations is also well documented if less well recognized (recall the entire Northern Corridor evacuations which I witnessed in 1971). That it seemingly will
not
be the last is deeply disturbing. Evacuations, forced migrations and purges are part and parcel of the Communist policy to remake the culture.

As to Jerry Ford, would a public tantrum over the murder of 300,000 have been seen as a sign of weakness or a sign of humanity, a sign of clumsiness or a sign of leadership? Is America now
unleadable
? Did Ford’s golf handicap increase or decrease during this period? Can Carter jog beyond it? Is America guilty of mythological ostrichism? Is it easier to bury our heads in each other’s asses (and call it a sexual revolution)?

History. Truth.
As closely as we can achieve truth via neutral observation (which does not mean neutral conclusions) that truth must be our criterion for our moral judgment of past actions and present policies. Good and evil do exist. Between, there are shades of gray...but...recognizing ground between should not limit one from seeing and judging the ground at the ends!

I cannot help but think of a line from Eric Hoffer: “You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Why didn’t you see it coming?!

Yes, Rita, I will help. Contact me directly.

N
ANG’S EYES WERE GLAZED.
“Never forget our people’s legacy,” he said to the new group, “or the Path of the Revolution. When I was as small as you I learned that from my father.”

“Met Nang.” Kosal, Nang’s bodyguard, escorted in a messenger.

“What is it? Can’t you see I’m with my children?”

“The old peasant from E-26...” The runner cowed under Nang’s glare.

“Good fertilizer,” Nang snapped. He rose to dismiss him.

“The one sent up from Sangkat 117. Very odd. The one who lives in the cocoon he carries on his back.”

Nang turned cold eyes on the young man. He pointed, walked away from the children, hissed, “When his camp is scheduled for disposal, dispose of him.”

“He said”—the runner rushed the words—“he knows the Center is disappointed.”

“What?”

“With the crop. He said if the system was brought into harmony with the local terrain we would double the crop without additional effort. Met Arn had his plan. Arn thinks you might like to review it.”

“Then show me.”

“Ye...yes. Ah...one more...”

“
Yes
! Say it!”

“The new site...”

“More delays?”

“...it’s operational.”

Chhuon untied his bundle of poles, relashed them into a bed frame and set the cocoon cover in place. Met Arn had ordered him to move again and he’d moved with grace, moved more easily than an occidental carrying a suitcase through an airport. His stomach no longer burned. It had made peace with the rest of his physical being. His knees ached worse than ever. Still he moved as if the body and the pain were not his, were not the carriers of his spirit, but as if they were needless though not burdensome adjuncts to his being. He crawled into the woven cocoon-house, closed the foot-door blocking the sun, cracked the head-door for light, and immediately set to work on his crude drawings. Perhaps, he thought, they would disappear him for drawing, but drawing was not writing and the need for proper planning was urgent if starvations were to be avoided.

Chhuon reviewed his sketches of the waterworks at Sangkat 117. He added details to the cross-section of the long dike which had turned to muck and melted and let the water wash out and destroy the lower fields as it drained and dried the upper. Then he reviewed his newer diagrams, his proposed dike cross-sections, his overall design based on smaller, more manageable paddies within the new monster fields. It is right, he thought, to aspire to feed the people. It is right to believe Angkar will listen. It is right to speak, to strive. He closed the sketch pad, closed the head-door, lay back. In him, always, refusing to abandon him, was the belief he could make it work, make any of it work, if he, Cahuom Chhuon, were only allowed to bring his mind and his effort to the it, and if he received even a modicum of cooperation, a morsel of others’ belief. A morsel of others’...He let his mind slip. His fingers absently patted the hidden pocket where his notebooks were concealed, then dropped to his side. Soon, he thought, they will come for me. Soon...the thought would not stick. Perhaps he slept for an hour, perhaps only a few minutes. Within, below the eyelids, light stuttered, his being vibrated. Then all subsided into calm reasoning: they would accept his plan because it was common sense, because in light of the past disasters, his answer, when revealed, was obviously the correct solution. Then the old thought recurred, respawned, now faint, now sorrowful: He’s alive. I know he’s alive. Why? Why has Kdeb abandoned me?

Suddenly there was jarring. Ripping. Bright lights burning. His face shook. Eyes opened, bleary.

“Hey, Comrade Ancient One.” A second-level cadre flung the head-door into the communal straw heap for cooking fires. The address used was not the old honorary form but an old derogatory idiom, a cross between “bum” and “derelict.” “Behind closed doors people become devils. Comrade Nang has decreed, doors are no longer allowed.” With that the foot-door was ripped from the cocoon.