For the Sake of All Living Things (16 page)

F
OR SEVEN DAYS THEY
were beaten harshly. Their hair was cut, short on the sides, left thick on top. Their clothes were taken from them, even the clothes Nang had received from Met Hon after the coffin torture. Another break with the past, another barrier to even the minutest growth of security. The new issue of baggy, lightweight green utilities announced immediately to everyone they were plebes to be hazed, conscripts to be humiliated, boys with pasts that must be beaten, starved or terrorized out of them or who must die in the attempt.

For ten days they subsisted on reduced food and water rations until hunger and thirst became constant thoughts adding the fear of death by starvation to the fear of beatings. For fourteen nights they were locked, alone, hands tied, in tiny cages where lizards scurried about their bodies; or in twos, in leg stocks exposed to the elements in the open yard. One night, while Nang suffered in the stocks, Ur escaped from his cage. He did not attempt to escape from the camp. There was no possibility. He slinked to a water jug, stole the ladle and drank. Then, in the dark, he crept to Nang, then to the smaller boy, Pah. He dared not release them but he brought them water. Then he returned the ladle to the jar and himself to the cage.

Nang’s first interrogation, before the beatings began, was the night of the day he was delivered to the School of the Cruel. He was instructed to sit in a chair at a small wooden desk in what looked to him like his Uncle Cheam’s office, only much larger.

An older man asked him his name. The man was gentle, well spoken. Nang hesitated. Guards lurked in corners and doorways. Other conscripts were seated at other tables with other men. “It’s all right,” the man said. “Call me Met Sar. In here you will always be safe.”

“Nang,” the boy answered. As the word seeped from his mouth he flinched, expecting to be hit.

“It’s okay, Nang. No one will hurt you. We need to know more about you.” Met Sar’s voice was soothing. To Nang the man looked like Uncle Cheam. He even sounded like Nang’s uncle when Cheam was not talking business or politics. “Nang, what was your village?”

The interrogator wrote the answer. He asked the boy about his schooling and they talked for some minutes about the pagoda in Phum Sath Din, the lay of the homes, the names of the families and of each member. Met Sar systematically recorded the information and filed different sheets in different folders. Then they talked about rice and irrigation. Met Sar was amazed at Nang’s knowledge of the subject and made special note of it in his file. “One day, you will be a patriot and hero of Kambuja,” Met Sar told him. He used the ancient name for Cambodia as though time had receded a thousand years.

Sar leaned back in his chair. “What of your family?” he asked.

Nang looked bitterly at the older man. “You killed my father. And my sister.” He was vehement. His entire body trembled.

Met Sar placed his hands together and bowed in contemplation. “Tell me how this happened,” he said.

Nang’s face contorted. Tears ran from his eyes. His voice quivered. “The giant, Bok Roh...He chopped Mayana...”

“Bok Roh!” Met Sar interrupted with feigned astonishment. “He’s not part of us. He...I know of him. He serves the yuons. Tell me...tell me! Tell me what happened.”

For an hour Nang recounted the day at Plei Srepok, the village attack, soldiers, meeting, executions and fire. Nang described Bok Roh and repeated long passages of his rantings, he, Nang, did not know were in his mind. Met Sar urged him on, asked him to expand various parts. He interrupted various passages to explain, reexplain, to lead Nang to the knowledge that those responsible for his father’s and sister’s deaths were Viet Namese and a few bad Khmers who served their interests. “Bok Roh, eh?” Met Sar said. “He could have been a great warrior for Kambuja. But he was seized by the yuons at the time of the false independence. He spent a dozen years in camps north of Hanoi where they turned his mind against his own people. I too hate him. He and the yuons are worthy of your hate. We will teach you, systematically, how to avenge your father. You’ve much to learn.”

Nang stared at Met Sar. The smile on the older man’s lips was thin. His eyes sunk deeper into his skull. Nang glanced about the room. All the conscripts and interrogators were gone. Only a single guard remained at the far end where one wall was solid with files. “You must be trained,” Met Sar said. “At times it will be very hard. But everything is done with purpose. Once you are clean you’ll be allowed special privileges. You’ve been abandoned by your family and all elders. The Movement is your salvation. I have no past. You have no past. There is no past. You have no name. For now you are Prisoner. The Movement will name you when the time comes. There is only the present and the future, and the future exists only in the Movement.”

Nang was fed his last full meal then taken alone to an isolation section where the week of beatings and deprivation began. Again and again he was interrogated—not by Met Sar but by toughs, by dumb, brutal guards who forced absurd confessions from him then beat him for the lies. He was forced to learn catchphrases and creeds, was beaten if he stuttered, refused to answer or didn’t know. Toward the end of the first week two very strong Khmer soldiers made him crawl into one of the isolated sections where beatings could be meted out without witnesses. They stood over him. Nang sat on the ground as he had learned. His legs were straight, his feet pointed, his back erect. He held his hands stiff, flat to the side of his knees. His chin was up. He stared forward in the posture of perfect attention.

“Ur...” one interrogator asked, “he is your friend, eh?” Nang did not answer. The interrogator spoke softly. “He does not have a proper attitude,” the soldier said. “You’ll keep an eye on him for us.” Still Nang didn’t answer. He concentrated all his energy into sitting perfectly still. “Prisoner, I said you’ll watch him for me.” No reaction. “Yes?” Nang’s eyes darted to the dark figure. “In the village of Phum Sath Din there is a woman, Neang Thi Sok, with a mother-in-law, two sons, Samay and Sakhon, and a daughter, Vathana. They say the daughter has very soft skin.” The soldier’s face contorted into an eerie smile. “You’ll spy on Ur. You’ll tell me every word he speaks or Vathana will be brought here for interrogation.” The guard laughed heartily. “Say yes.”

“Yes,” Nang answered.

“Say, ‘I will spy on Ur.’ ”

“I will spy on Ur.”

“If you kill yourself, Prisoner,” the second guard said, “she will be brought here for torture. Now, report!”

Nang chanted as he had learned, “In rain, in wind, in health, in sickness, day or night, I will obey, correctly and without complaining, what the Movement orders.”

“So,” Louis said, “what is she like?”

The five young men sat beneath a large umbrella at an outdoor cafe on the main street of Neak Luong. Louis and Kim sat with their backs to the road. Thiounn and Sakun bracketed Pech Chieu Teck, their backs to the cafe wall. “You know,” Teck said.

“Ha!” Kim laughed. “Tell us.”

“She’s just a girl,” Teck said sheepishly. They spoke French at the cafe, at school, whenever they were together.

“Sure!” Louis laughed. Teck was the first of their crowd to be arranged in marriage and the others had been teasing him for weeks. “ ‘Just a girl,’ ” Louis mimicked Teck. “Ha! I thought the Dragon Lady would have found you a boy! Ha!”

“That’s not right speech,” Thiounn said mock-seriously. “You can’t call the madam ‘Dragon Lady.’ Her baby boy might feel hurt.”

“Really!” Teck said. He sipped his cola and winked at the waitress who was serving at the next table. All the friends laughed.

“Ooo-la-la.” Kim giggled. They were in excellent spirits. “Come on now, tell us.”

“Well,” Teck said, “she’s...you know, she’s a country girl.”

“Ha!” Thiounn blurted. “You mean she has a round rump and a round face and...”

“No! No,” Teck cut in. “She’s very pretty. Really. You’ll see.”

“So what
does
your mother say?” Louis asked.

“You know her. She wanted my father to arrange something with that Phnom Penh family she likes, but Papa’s so Republican...you know how he is. He arranged it because her uncle is very Republican, too.”

“And you agreed, eh?” Louis said.

Teck leaned forward on his arms, looked away from his friends, out across the street and across the river. “How could I do otherwise?” he said quietly.

“You can’t stand up to him?” Thiounn said.

“No,” Teck responded. “Besides, he’s giving me a river barge as a wedding gift.”

“So,” Sakun said, “
that’s
it!”

“What about the girl,” Louis asked. “I want to know about her. Is she Republican?”

“Vathana?” Teck said. “I don’t think she knows anything about politics. You know those ceremonies. We didn’t get to talk much. Everything was very proper.”

Thiounn nudged him. “What would her uncle say if he knew you were a socialist?”

“I’m not,” Teck answered.

“No!?” Louis shooed Teck’s answer away with a flick of his hand. “Your father thinks you still study your painting, but we know.”

“I’ve been to a few rallies. That’s all.”

“You should be more serious,” Sakun said. “Truly. Marriage is a sacred rite and the Wheel of Life...”

“God! You sound like my father,” Teck said.

“Truly,” Sakun repeated. “When you’re married, you will have to change.”

Teck slapped his fingertips on the table. “I will still come here,” he said. “Just as always.”

The conscripts were reunited. They were told they would move en masse to a far section of the camp. Guards from the old section herded them into one end of a long, narrow, covered, meandering bamboo maze, then closed the gate. They had been instructed to run. Nang led the group. Fear made him obey. In obedience there was security. Ur hung back. Nang had not seen him since the night he brought the water. He was horrified. Without treatment Ur’s thigh wound had reinfected. He was ill, feverish. His nose had been broken. Bruises discolored his hands and feet. He had the look of being beyond fear. From the original wheel, only seven remained.

“Run with me.” Nang came back, prodded Ur. He had moved just past the first turn and stopped. The others had run until the second turn, then fear overcame them and they halted, hesitated, virtually running in place, afraid not to run, afraid to proceed into the tunnel. Slowly, they began to advance, disoriented, feeling the sides, afraid of their own disorientation, not even sure after the fourth or fifth turn if they indeed were continuing in the right direction or if they had accidentally reversed themselves and were headed back to their old tormentors.

“Samnang,” Y Bhur said. “We must escape.”

Samnang, Nang thought. He turned, looked behind himself. The others were no longer in sight. Samnang, he thought again. It sounded very strange. He knew that once he had been...
“Run!”
The order roiled up out of him from somewhere he did not know, pushed by something he did not recognize, could not question. Nang grabbed Ur’s shoulder and pulled, ran and pulled with all his strength, a reserve he did not know existed. In seconds they were at the back of the cluster of cringing conscripts.
“Run!”
Nang growled horribly, growled like a guard, with contorted face. The mob spurted, hesitated. Nang dragged Ur crazily through, over the others, seething mad, pulled as if pulling the entire band until they burst forth from the tube.

Nang froze. Others cringed. A contingent of
neary
, girl soldiers, welcomed them with half coconut shells of water. Pah crept forward. Met Sar stepped before the ranks. To one side a double rank of green-clad cadets stood smartly at attention.

“Welcome.” Met Sar’s voice was so comforting Nang felt fear melt, flow from his face, through his shoulders, down his abdomen, felt it piss from his groin, trickle down his legs and seep into the earth. He hunched there like an animal, humiliated.

“From today on,” Met Sar said loudly enough for all to hear, “you shall be known as ‘student.’ ” To the seven he said quietly, “Stand up straight.” He motioned them erect with both hands, palms rising. “In a line, please.” The conscripts formed into a row. “You shall be Student Pah. You, Student Eng. You, Student Ur. The Movement will heal your wound. You, Student Nang.” He continued down the line, then directed them to a dining area.

Training was rigidly structured and compartmentalized. Varying tasks were accomplished at dispersed locations in or around the compound. Their days began at first light with vigorous calisthenics, then breakfast, followed by classes from seven o’clock to eleven o’clock. More physical exercise, lunch, chores, then classes from two to four-thirty. The new conscripts were added to a group of thirty-nine to make a class of forty-six. Nang found this camp delightful compared to the reception area. Had he recalled his home he would have found it pathetic, an ensnaring wretched quagmire of pitiful shacks, poor-quality rice and vile living conditions where only the elite were allowed any material comforts. But he did not compare it to Phum Sath Din. He compared it to the Mountaineer village aflame, to the coffin, the wheel, the beatings. Each day he grew stronger, more sure, slyer. Each day he understood more. Each day he received instructions in the new revolutionary mentality, the politics of enlightenment, the necessity for obedience. He was taught jungle living, hygiene and survival; he learned which plants were edible, which toxic. He was sent to collect a week’s food—leaves, roots, bark—set to prepare it, to exist on it. There was no time to think of earlier life. Each day the desire to earn a yothea’s krama, a soldier’s scarf, increased.

In religion class Nang sat mesmerized as the instructor said, “I bet you’ve been stuffed with Buddhist teachings, that you’ve heard your fathers talk of the evils of the upper classes and of Norodom Sihanouk.”

Yes, yes, Nang thought. How did you know? He sat perfectly still, though wishing to turn and speak to Student Eng beside him and tell him the teacher was right.

“The real Buddha is the People,” the instructor continued. “The People are invincible. They can accomplish any task. But they have been told since birth to give their spirit to this Buddha. Habit in youth becomes nature in age. For generations babies have had heaped upon them Buddha, Buddha, Buddha! Habit became nature. But it is not true. Henceforth, anyone who meddles with the People will be eliminated. Buddha! Augh! He was not even Kampuchean. Five hundred years ago some crazed monk from Sri Lanka tricked a frightened feudal monarch into exchanging the wealth of our nation for a promise of salvation. The monarchy forced the People to become Buddhist and this false foreign doctrine has passed from generation to generation as Kampuchea has been bled from great empire to poverty.