For the Sake of All Living Things (127 page)

One moment he is happy; one moment serious, thoughtful, pondering alternatives; then furious, raging uncontrollably; then very businesslike, controlled, detached. The periods in any mood grow shorter. The time arrives.

Vathana stands at the edge of the abyss. The rains had tapered off in late October. Now they have ceased entirely. Beside her is Nang. He is crazy. Eng is in the tree house, Soth has taken over Site 169. She feels them watching, feels Eng’s empty eyes. Vathana glances down. The lip of the cliff hides the bloody tangled mass below but the rising wind is full of its agony and decay. “I’ve imprisoned every man, every woman, every child...” Nang’s voice is conspiratorial. He does not look down. He moves as if there were not a four-hundred-foot drop only inches from his feet. “...in their communes. Ha! No, not there. In...” He grabs Vathana’s arm, turns her, pulls her back away from the edge. “...in their own minds. Ha! They know nothing. Nothing exists but what I tell them, what I show them.” To both sides Eng’s yotheas have mothers with children. They are making the women play blindman’s buff with their own offspring. One woman shrieks, tells a boy to run, jumps before she can see a yothea impale the boy with a bayonet. A second woman plays the game, tries to soothe her two daughters telling them it’s just a game. Everything will be all right. Vathana is numb. At the moment she hates both these stupid women and the sickeningly naive children. Why not make them kill you? Why kill yourself? Yet as Nang turns her again she thinks she herself will leap and end his game. “For years they’ve known nothing of Kampuchea,” he says. “The outside world does not exist. Only me. Only what I tell them.”

From the cliff edge Vathana can see hundreds of square miles of Cambodian territory yet she cannot get a sense of the land. It rolls here, is lush there, is barren there, flat there. Somewhere, there must still be Khmer people but Vathana is not certain. She sees none other than those approaching the cliff in the line that disappears behind the escarpment to the east. The hot rising air is so foul her mind retches but she shows no emotion. Nang has switched topics. He is telling her about the creek bed beneath the canopy, about the small hidden temple, “there is an Apsaras on the east wall that has eyes like yours, follow her eyes, she looks to the cache. Now, one more step.”

Vathana closes her eyes. It is time. “Divine Buddha...” she whispers. She lifts her left foot, advances it over the edge.

“Ha!” Nang spins her, pulls, walks her back, “you must be more careful, you promised Chhuon you’d take our story to the world.” He laughs loudly. Yotheas to each side smirk, laugh with him, at him. I...he thinks, they see me, they think I play the game better than them. Again he turns Vathana. “you must listen, there is the creek, there are mines on the west bank but not the east.” They are thirty feet from the edge, walking slowly.

“Samnang.” Vathana lays a hand on his arm. She is trembling. “Let me go. I want to go to Papa!”

“ach!” The noise of disgust is very quiet, “you go to Chhuon, you are dead.”

“Isn’t that what...”

“Twenty-eight thousand in thirty days. That’s the latest report. I’m the best. Sar must take notice. You tell the world. Then Sar will know, too. No one knows. They know only what they’re told. Tell them, twenty-eight thousand in thirty days. Tell them no one is better than Nang. Yesterday I measured the fill, the drop is now less than three hundred feet. Can you survive that?”

“You can kill me. You can let me kill myself. Or you can let me go. Those are your choices. You make that choice for everyone. You make that choice, Kdeb.”

Again they are at the edge. Vathana has grasped Nang’s sleeve. “So many,” she whispers. “So many have died. There is Chhuon, Sok, Grandmother. Let’s go to Papa together.”

“Ha! Haha!” Nang snatches grips at both her shirt sleeves. His laugh is loud. “Ha! You are crazier than me! Ha!” He pulls her down with his right pincer, pushes up with his good hand. Vathana resists, yet he is very strong and she leans face first over the edge. Her knee buckles. He releases. She slides head first down the lip. He grabs an ankle. She reaches out, down, digs her fingers into the dry crumbling stone, pulls herself down. He sits, pulls back, digs his heels in. She flails her arms, twists her body, attempts to kick his hand with her free foot. Her skirt flaps up over her back.

Half a dozen cliff yotheas converge, laughing, staring. One grabs Nang’s shoulder and pulls. Then another assists. All are laughing. Nang lets her dangle, thrash. Three yotheas form a chain. One reaches out, grabs the waistband of her pants, pulls them back. “What an ass,” one yells. “Look at her hump the cliff,” another calls. “Hey, let’s hump her first.” “Yeah.” They drag Nang, he drags Vathana. He lifts her by the ankles, pulls her over his back. “Me first,” he shouts. “Me first.” He runs away from the cliff. The yotheas follow. He runs beyond the row of cells. They cannot go there. “Hey, bring her back,” they yell. He pays no heed.

Again Nang cages Vathana but now continuously, not just at night. “For safekeeping,” he insists. He is morbid. He has fallen into a chasm of guilt and depression so deep that the violent acts occurring in the East are not new PAVN blitzkrieg spearheads but the righteous punishment of God, the lightning and sword, of Vishnu striking through Viet Namese-aimed, Russian-made cannons, tanks and rockets. Radio Hanoi’s broadcasts call for a general uprising, plot the advance in words.

Eng is incensed. He wants to go to the front. The front is coming to him. Mimot, Snuol, Svay Rieng have fallen. The PAVN is driving up Highway 1 toward Neak Luong, up U-shaped Highway 7 toward the Chup Plantation on one leg and toward Kratie on the other, and down out of Ratanakiri along Highway 19 through Andaung Pech, past the ruins of Phum Sath Din toward Stung Treng. Radio Phnom Penh reports resistance everywhere, reports brave victories ever closer to the Mekong. From Viet Nam there is announcement of the new Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation. It is headed by Heng Samrin.

Everywhere there is the whisper, “the viet namese are coming. the viet namese are coming.” The whisper grows louder.

“Met Nang,” Eng calls in a loud voice. There is no answer. Vathana can hear the commotion, the movement of squads of yotheas in and about the house, but she sees nothing.’ Nang has covered her cage as one covers a birdcage at night.

“Met Nang.” Vathana recognizes the voice of Eng’s underling, Soth. “You are accused of heinous crimes against the people...” More commotion, scuffling, shots, then running and quiet. Suddenly, beyond, there are explosions.

Vathana does not feel sorrow though she is sad. There is but one heaven, she thinks. It is what Chhuon taught her when she was very little. One death for all bodies, one heaven for all souls. But only to have lived better, only to have died with peace in his heart. It is now very quiet. The house is empty, she thinks. They have gone. She reaches through the slats of the cage and lifts the plastic tarp. It is dusk. She is alone. She has never before attempted a break from the cage and she thinks of Nang’s words—I have imprisoned them in their own minds. She thinks it is disgusting yet she knows it is true. The latch is crude but strong. She cannot budge the pins. The cage is lashed together with vines and wires. She works on a joint. The wires are easy to untwist and unwrap but the vines have dried and are hard as wood. Methodically she picks at just one, at just the edge. She is able to break off a sliver. She works. She is frustrated by the resilience of the rattan. She quits. Holds her head. Pulls her hair. Then she attacks the vines again.

It is now dark. Vathana has broken two lashing joints. She thinks it will take five before she can separate the side from the top enough to force her head through. There is noise in the yard. She works frantically. There is noise in the house. She pulls the tarp down, freezes. She tries to stop breathing. Her chest aches. The noise stops. She is certain it—he?—who?—has not departed. She waits. Her head is hot. The air under the tarp is stale, the ambient odor from the abyss is caged with her. She hears a step, a creak of the floor. Then again all is silent. Still she doesn’t move. More noise—outside. Something light scampers into the room with her. There are shouts. Yotheas. They’ve surrounded the house. Then the tarp flicks up. A knife blade slits the joints Vathana had been working on. “come.” The voice is small. Vathana squeezes up, out to the waist, “quick.” It is little Comrade Child, girl. The girl pulls her to the floor. Then she lies atop Vathana and covers them both with the crumpled tarp. Yotheas are stomping into the house, flashlight beams cross the central room, flick into Nang’s room, into the cage.

“Damn it.” The voice is hard, angry. “She’s escaped. Go for the aunt. She’ll go there.” There is the noise of a squad rushing out.

Comrade Child, girl, waits only half a minute. Then she creeps from under the tarp, pulling Vathana with her. Quickly, quietly, she leads Vathana from the house, from the yard, out beyond the minefields to the trail to the cliff. She does not speak. Vathana follows, blind, dumb. Aunt, she thinks. Aunt Voen. Where is she? Comrade Child hustles on. The path is empty. At the cliff base the stink, the moaning air, the night gnats assault them. Still they stumble on. Above, Vathana senses the light show strung between the points of the horseshoe, but she does not look up. A shriek, a hundred shrieks fill the air. Thuds, thunks, moans, gasps. Vathana’s senses close down. They slip off the path toward the cliff, base. The falling, dying humans splat upon the dead and rotting so near they are sprayed with blood and fluids. Comrade Child descends into the creek. Her footing is sure. Vathana cannot see. She stumbles, falls, rises. Comrade Child stops. As Vathana reaches her the girl pulls her past, “you aren’t...don’t leave me.”

“booby trap.” The little girl removes the pin from a grenade and sets the trip wire. They move on. Three more times Comrade Child arms traps. In the ancient Hindu temple there is a faint light. All about are Nang’s children. Comrade Child, girl, directs Vathana to enter as she goes to her post. The stones are cold and damp against her feet. The breasts of the Apsarases and the tips of the lingas have all been chipped. In the pale light Vathana sees a man. He is dressed in bloody tattered rags taken from a corpse. He bows to her, his hands together in an awkward
lei.
“Have you eaten rice today!” The old idiom.

“Samnang!”

“I am Eng Samron of Stung Treng.”

“Samnang. I thought...Those clothes...How...”

“I am in the clothes of my people. Join my people. Nang is dead. When Eng sprang the trap, my children sprang theirs. Eng too is dead. And the most treacherous, Soth. You must change clothes. Then we will go.”

Slowly Vathana edges forward. Gently she lays her left hand on the drooping waxlike scar. She runs her hand up to his forehead, across, down his other scarred cheek, down his neck, across his chest to his arm and to his mutilated hand. “You could have been such a fine younger brother.”

“Quickly now,” Nang says. “We have very far to go. I will go out. Put these on.”

All night they travel west and south, deeper into Cambodia. At moments Vathana feels safe, free, then she feels very frightened. Much of the time they crawl through low, prepared tunnel trails through dense vegetation—trails like those made by a small rabbit. At dawn they hole up. At dusk they set off again. West farther, then north. Again they stop at dawn. They are hidden in a forested oasis of green amid a sea of ruined paddies. Quietly Nang points out minefields, ambush sites, sniper holes, death pits. He knows every inch of the landscape, every bone of the dead. “If I had been allowed to continue,” Nang says matter-of-factly, “Kampuchea would be a land without Kampucheans, eh!” Then he laughs. “Now...” He laughs again. It is very funny. “Eng Samron shall go to Stung Treng. Papa is there. He’s there with Uncle Cheam. I will go to school. He promised I could.”

“Samnang...” Vathana begins, but he interrupts.

“I had a friend from Prey Veng. He is Rin, Met Rin. He is very impressed with Nang of Kompong Thom. A Gray Vulture. Why do you think I wore his uniform all these years? So he will know. Now there, you see, there is Thailand. At dusk you will take my children there.”

“You’ll come too.”

“Me? No. I have a choice, eh? I am Eng Samron of the Khmer Viet Minh. I have valuable intelligence about the forces of Democratic Kampuchea. How can I go there?”

One forgets joy, one never forgets sorrow.

—Mihail Lermontov,
A Hero of Our Times

Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.

—Bernard Manned Baruch

An aerogram!

I did not quit in June of 1978. Nor in 1979 after the Viet Namese overran Kampuchea. For two years I worked for Cambodian Crisis Relief. Then I quit. I returned to the United States in late 1980, returned, burned up and burned out. For a while I worked for Mr. Pradesh on the ranch, for a while I drifted doing odd jobs here and there. Through a contact I had made through Rita Donaldson, I worked for
The Washington News-Times
for almost a year. During this period I researched and prepared background files for the paper’s reporters and editors. Then, last year, I returned to the Pradesh ranch, resumed my daily chores here while staying somewhat abreast of the situation in Southeast Asia. Some days it seems so far away and so long ago. Then, on days like today, it seems so immediate. Below is my last report before I close this account. An aerogram? That’s how Mr. Pradesh pronounced it. He called down here from the main house. He says there is an aerogram for me from Bangkok.

The Cambodian holocaust has not stopped. There is so much more to tell. The camps; the expulsion from Thailand of more than 40,000 refugees, their forced march down the high escarpment of the Dang Rek Mountains near Preah Vihear into the maw of the Viet Namese army; the suicides caused by callous U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officers; the incredible
purposeful continuation of the starvation
which killed an estimated 600,000 Khmer in the first year of Hanoi’s occupation; the occupation and colonialization of the Socialist Republic of Kampuchea by the hegemonic Hanoi warlords bowing before their own new emperor, the Soviets. That is history, not the story of Cahuom Chhuon’s family.