For the Sake of All Living Things (123 page)

“But my husband...he is not dead.”

“Your file said you never married.”

“I have a son. At the center.”

“He was your sister’s. He’s dead.”

“I have a husba—”

“Have you not yet learned to tremble?! You’ll see. Tomorrow night I will present you to the meeting. Angkar has decreed the people will produce more workers to advance the economy. Tomorrow you will marry my son.”

That night Vathana had a dream. Her dead mother came to her and told her not to marry this man. In the dream Vathana beseeched her mother’s spirit for a solution. The spirit said she would help and vanished.

All the next day Vathana was pampered by the housekeeper. The older woman brought her water and French soap to bathe, a small vial of perfume, new panties, a comb for her hair. She was given more new clothes, black; a sarong skirt, a shirt and a black krama. When night fell and the workers returned from the new excavation sites, there was a big meeting and a big celebration. For hours various chieftains boasted, bolstered or blasted the people. A cow was killed. Everyone was given a sliver of meat. Then names were called. From one side came fifty wisps of girl workers, from the other mostly yotheas though a few peasant men. The “betrothed” were not allowed to touch but simply stood across the center aisle from each other. Then Vathana was brought in to stand at the front of the line of women. In her new clothes with her regained weight she felt conspicuous. Compared to the others she was plump, beautiful. Her eyes shone. About her head she’d wrapped the black krama like an Egyptian goddess and in her clean hands she held a white chrysanthemum. Met Leng was helped to the head of the line of men. He could not stand without a crutch, for one foot pointed not sole to earth, but sole to sky. From the middle of his chest stuck the deformed arm. He leered at Vathana. She showed no shock, indeed appeared at ease with the deformed transporter of the dead.

Met Rama had been purged. Met Yam had been disappeared. Met Nava conducted the ceremony. “Comrades being married,” he said proudly, “today you accept the responsibility for each other as husband and wife until the end of your days. Assist each other in your service to Angkar. Never allow the other to falter. Now we will sing the national anthem. Then, eat soup. Then go back to work.” Nava led the meeting in song:

Bright red Blood which covers towns and plains

Of Kampuchea, our Motherland, Sublime Blood of workers and peasants,

Sublime Blood of revolutionary men and women fighters!

The Blood changing into unrelenting hatred ,

And resolute struggle,

On April 17th, under the Flag of the Revolution,

Frees from Slavery!

Long live, long live Glorious April 17th!

Glorious Victory with greater signification

Than the times of Angkor!

We are uniting to edify

Splendid and democratic new Kampuchea and new society

With equality and justice,

Firmly applying the line of independence, sovereignty and self-reliance.

Let us resolutely defend

Our Motherland, our sacred Soil

And our Glorious Revolution!

Long live, long live, long live, Democratic and prosperous new Kampuchea!

Let us resolutely raise high

The red Flag of the Revolution!

Let us edify our Motherland!

Let us make her advance with great leaps,

So that She will be more glorious and more marvelous than ever!

Vathana brought her new husband a stool. She sat at his feet. Small straw fires lit the ceremonial arena. Children brought bowls of soup, one per couple, and a choir sang revolutionary songs.

“Do I please you?” Vathana’s voice was sweet as she looked just below Leng’s eyes.

“You do,” he answered, reaching out to touch her. He put his good hand to her cheek, to her forehead. She pushed her head into it like a cat. He pushed his thumb up behind her ear. Her head...“Damn
you
!” he bellowed. He threw her to the ground ripping away the krama. Her head was bald, rough shaven, stubble and cuts everywhere. “You
whore
!” Leng screamed furiously. He kicked his broken leg, swung his bent arm. He roared, growled unintelligible noises.

Vathana scrambled up. “I am not your slave,” she shouted back. “I am not your servant. None of us are slaves? What are you going to do, kill me? Do it. I wish only deliverance from this hell.”

“Then”—Leng’s face distorted—“build your house at...at...at 169.”

People who have suffered multiple tortures and who have been starved for long periods do not scramble to elude additional inescapable torture but instead tend to set their minds and bodies for the impending punishment. So deep is the hopelessness of slavery that even when an opening for escape or resistance is presented, the tortured’s eyes are shut. “Submit. Go along. All attempts to flee have ended in death.” Thus it was, after Vathana’s small rebellion against Met Leng sent her to Site 169, Vathana’s spirit was in a greater state of depression than ever before. Only the promise to her father via Aunt Voen kept her from total submission and acquiescence to her own death. It did not, however, spark even the tiniest resistance to the tiger cage, nor did it cause her to object to all she was shown.

Life in the camp at 169 differed little from life at Sangkat 117. Vathana was immediately assigned a hut, given a tin plate, and put to work planting rice seedlings. Soon the monsoon rains began in earnest. The people at 169 were better fed than those at 117 yet still they were famished, frail, dropping from lack of food and long, tedious, strenuous slave labor. They were different in a way Vathana did not yet understand, more withdrawn, more suspicious. Constantly there was undertalk of the cliffs, of the body dumps and of an invasion force which soon would liberate them. Yet no sooner would Vathana hear someone whisper such than that person and those near her would be disappeared forever. Thus she too withdrew, spoke to no one, listened to no one. In June when the sun shone between rains she asked it, How can you shine on Cambodia? Why do you not weep until the land is washed clean? Indeed the rains were unusually hard that summer and the little dry season unusually short. The irrigation systems were chaotic. In one area water flowed too quickly and destroyed the earthworks, in another it stagnated to the point of putrefying. Flies flew in viscous swarms beneath the roofs of the huts without doors. Mosquitos, their buzzing constant, were so ravenous, ubiquitous, that when slaves were beaten they barely bled. Vathana tore small swabs from the hem of her skirt and plugged her ears. She wrapped her krama so it fit snugly at her eyebrows then loosely over and around her head, then doubling back to protect her neck and face. At night she slept beneath the cloth, pulled her ulcerated feet up into her skirt, her bony hands into the sleeves of her blouse. Still the flies and mosquitos got to her. Some of the less fortunate, some with no energy and no hope, let the insects feed and breed on them, calculating that death would thus liberate them sooner. From the eyes and open sores of those despondent souls squirmed maggots.

One night in July, forty-four women from a neighboring brigade, using their kramas, hung themselves. Seven were unsuccessful because the fabric of their scarves was too weak to hold their emaciated bodies. The next night eighteen more succeeded. On the third night Vathana was awakened by mosquitos on her face and neck sucking her dry. Someone had stolen her krama. Slowly, as first light crept into the hut, the images of her hut mates emerged. All were hung by their necks from kramas tied to the rafters.

“Stand still!” The yothea was mean, stern. In three days seventy people had cheated Angkar of killing them. “You will answer immediately and fully all questions you are asked.” Vathana stood perfectly still. Before she’d reported the suicides to her
mekong
she had regained her krama from a corpse and rewrapped her head and face. A young girl had evidently attempted to hang herself with her own scarf. When it shredded, she had quietly and gently removed Vathana’s while she slept. Vathana had found the girl’s tattered cloth near her sleeping mat. She had taken it and tied it about the girl’s neck, then she’d placed the body in such position as to make it appear the krama had held until after death.

Vathana waited. The yothea waited. He strode back and forth. She did not know why. The camp’s enforcer had been purged the day before. People were the property of Angkar Leou and only Angkar had the right to dispose of its property. As she stood she could feel her face heat up. She could feel sweat break out into the krama. Her entire body was warm and she thought the spirit of the dead girl must have been in her krama and now had entered her and was very angry. Then she felt chilled. Her jaw trembled. She tried to clench her teeth but they chattered out of control. Her head ached. Her breathing became rapid and shallow.

A car arrived. She had not seen an automobile in almost two years but her head hurt so badly she was not able to concentrate. A young man emerged. He was stiff and straight and strong, clad in the most beautiful gray uniform Vathana had ever seen. The yothea ran to him, snapped to attention, seemed ready to fall to the ground to kiss the man’s polished boots. The young man barely noticed. Other men emerged. They marched straight to her. Her trembling was now very bad.

“Did you aid these criminals?” The young man’s voice was even, professional.

Vathana tried to swallow but her throat had swelled; saliva and phlegm stuck at the epiglottis. She opened her mouth to speak but only the chattering of her teeth made sound. The man reached his hands to her krama, peeled it from her face then removed it completely. “Did you?”

“N...n...no.”

“No, Met Nang,” an aide corrected her.

“N...n...no, Me...et N...”

“That’s all right.” Nang smiled compassionately. “You are ill?” He snickered. If one claimed illness Angkar often interpreted it as a criticism. To criticize Angkar meant death. “Don’t speak. I can see you are ill.” He studied her face. “You didn’t join them, eh? That took great strength.” Nang turned to the local yothea. “See that she collects her belongings and comes to my house in the forest.”

“Yes, Met Nang.”

Nang smiled. He still held Vathana’s krama. Now he looked at her more closely. Her hair stuck out like porcupine quills, her face was a massive welt of mosquito bites, yet her eyes, shrunk in the hollows in her face, were the darkest he had ever seen.

“Why didn’t you join them?” Nang’s small laugh was vile. Vathana only trembled. Nang approved of her submissiveness. “In two days”—he beamed to Met Kosol—“to my house.”

To go build a house in the forest was a euphemism for being taken away to be murdered. Vathana was very frightened but her new sickness was so severe that for hours at a time she had no concentration for fear. She thought of the sickness—fevers and headaches and chills—and when she was lucid she knew it had been coming on for weeks, knew it was malaria, knew there was no one to help her, nowhere to get medicine. But in the hut where she had been condemned to stay amid the hanging dead she was seldom lucid.

She lay in delirium, thinking, I must live. I promised Papa. Tell them. No. You mustn’t. Don’t argue with them. They’ll kill you. Go along. I will live to get out. Go along. I’ll go to meet Mama. Sweet Mama. How I cry when I think of Papa’s words when he buried you. Mama, I’ve lost my children. Samol. You would love Samol. Is she with you? Samnang. He’s six now. Oh, what a wonderful boy. He is so strong. And Su Livanh. She had...no, Mama, she has red hair. She is so funny. What! Oh God, what’s coming? Please. Get them away. They’ll slash me. No! Don’t make me fertilizer. Oh Divine Buddha...Oh! Teck! You...they killed you. I’m sorry. I don’t want to lose your child. Don’t be angry. Don’t blame me. I would be a good wife if you...Samnang. Teck, leave Samnang...He...he’s a good boy...I’ll come to Phnom Penh. John? He...you know how I am ordered...I hate America...I hate Americans...you know how...I love Captain Sullivan. You cannot take him. You cannot take him in the night.

When the fever broke Vathana lay listless, exhausted, not yet asleep but in semiconsciousness, trying to hang on to the delirium dream, to analyze it, but usually losing it in the sleep that followed. For two days she lay in the hut of the hanging dead. Six times the fever spiked, six hours she spent feeling it coming, feeling her headache build to the point she knew her brains would burst, then six hours in delirium fevers trembling, moaning, then fifteen hours in postfever semiconsciousness or sleep.

In the few hours between she prepared her body for disappearance. Carefully she cleaned herself as best she could. Carefully she arranged her clothes, confiscating a single clean sarong skirt from the mat of a woman in her hut. There was but to wait, to pray. She did not eat. There was only green rice and only a little. It would be of better use for someone who was not to go to the forest.

The second day passed. No one came for her. Then passed the third, fourth and fifth. The fevers got worse. Now, in the time between, the headaches were so severe she could not rise. The sixth day passed. She was morose. Bodies began to fall, to break apart and fall. The smell was horrible. Inside she cried because she was all alone. She had no tears. Then someone came and told her there was war at the border and the Center had issued a new directive. Everyone with Viet Namese ancestry was to be killed immediately. Met Nang was very busy. The cliff was overloaded. She should return to work and live elsewhere.

Beat thyself,
America
, he thought, he screamed at them in his thoughts. Sullivan stood at the bar. Conklin would not make it to San Francisco for two more days. He had resisted drinking, but with Huntley backing out and Conklin’s delay, he’d had a shot and a beer and his resistance had crumbled.

Flail thy back with the straps of Southeast Asian crimes ye committed, he yelled at the top of his lungs in his mind as he chased the Jack Daniel’s with Bud. Forget all else. For what does it mean for a nation to gain all the world but to lose its soul, eh? Ay, ye decrepit fool, proclaim thy guilt and bury thyself in self-indulgence. Fornicate in BMWs. Masturbate in stone-washed dun-gar-ees. What matter? You’ve been proven guilty of the most heinous crimes—your young bucks have, in time of war, under great tension and less than great leadership, they have raped, murdered, plundered.