For the Sake of All Living Things (36 page)

“My brothers and sisters were never so sleepy,” Vathana cried back. “Never.”

“You don’t love your own child, woman,” Teck snorted. He fumbled in the closet pulling out first a pair of white trousers, then beige, then light yellow. “What’s all the noise out there?”

Vathana opened the bedroom door. Her eyes glistened with tears though she was not crying. From the street voices, shouts, could be heard though words couldn’t be distinguished. “We should have him examined by the doctors in Phnom Penh,” Vathana said.

“You’re a worrisome farmer’s daughter,” Teck shot back.

“And you”—Vathana’s tears burst—“you...you’re more French than Khmer.” In Khmer she added, “A Khmer man would never treat his wife or son so.”

From outside a subdued crackling staccato of firecrackers or automatic rifles could be heard. Then loud shouts. Screams. “What’s going on out there?” Teck boomed. The cacophony excited him, intrigued him. Not looking at Vathana, walking quickly past Sophan and the infant, Teck checked himself in the mirror then fled through the apartment door.

11 March 1970—Nang squatted in the doorway of a small shop on Monivong Boulevard in Phnom Penh. The early morning sky was heavy with dark clouds. In other doorways, behind fences, in courtyards, beneath blossoming trees, student leaders lurked, Krahom boys and girls waited patiently, government agents tensed and relaxed their muscles. Phnom Penh woke. Trucks clattered by, buses belched black clouds of diesel exhaust, motorbikes wheezed, and radios splashed their voices into streets unaware of those listening. Small battles, Nang thought—he did not wish to be sidetracked by the sights, noises, smells or opulence of the city—but promising successes.

Suddenly from behind, “What do you want?” a shopkeep demanded. Nang started. He had not heard the door unlatch. The man approached. Nang glared like a trapped cat, silent, wary. Then his face cracked in nervous eerie smile. “Go!” the shopkeep barked. “Get out of here!”

Nang slinked back. Jungle vigilance was easier than city, he thought. His neck stiffened. He leaned back against a wet concrete facade. Immediately water soaked through his shirt, chilled him. He raised his shoulders, pulled his elbows tightly to his sides. A truck horn blasted. Again he started. Evil, he thought. Cities are evil, just as Met Sar says. That woman. I bet she’s one. City women sell themselves. City noise is evil. City air is evil. City dwellers are evil. It’s our duty, our destiny, to establish order—for the good of Kampuchea. He shivered. The left corner of his mouth twitched.

Two students ran toward him. He tensed. Seemingly from nowhere young people began to seep onto the street, to flow slowly toward him, by him. “Come with us, Little Brother,” one called, and Nang became part of the growing crowd. “You look frightened,” the boy said jovially to Nang. Nang looked up with naive, trusting puppy eyes. “Little Brother”—the student was concerned—“have you eaten today? Are you hungry? Where do you sleep?”

“I have no home,” Nang said sadly. “It was taken by yuons.” He walked shyly, lagged behind the student.

“Where was your home?” The boy walked backwards, smiling, happy, hoping Nang would walk faster, not wanting to lose his friends.

“We lived in the Northeast,” Nang answered.

“Hey, listen to this kid,” the student called out, trying to slow his friends. “He’s one of ’em.”

“Come Tam,” one friend called back. “We don’t want to miss the speech.”

“They murdered my family,” Nang said, catching up to Tam.

“What?! Vanty! Chan! Listen!” Tam’s face lost its cheerful gleam. “We’ve got to bring him with us. The yuons made him an orphan.”

At each block the crowd grew in chunks as new marchers came from side streets. The occasion was festive though the sky remained ominous. Minor commotions erupted sporadically around student leaders, government agents and border refugees.

From one corner a chant began. “VIET NAM QUIT CAMBODIA! VIET NAM QUIT CAMBODIA!” Others picked it up. “VIET NAM QUIT CAMBODIA!” Through city center two thousand strong the demonstrators chanted. More joined. Several contingents of small motorcycles squeezed between walkers, the riders revving tiny motors in time with the chant. “VIET NAM QUIT CAMBODIA!” From Norodom Boulevard a second demonstration meshed with the first, a third came from the stadium, a fourth from the central market area. Ten thousand strong and growing they marched on the North Viet Namese and Provisional Revolutionary Government embassies. Throughout the crowd monks positioned themselves offering examples of controlled peaceful protest. Throughout the crowd Krahom children, government agents and soldiers pumped bellows on the fires of hate.

“When they came into our village,” Nang whimpered to Tam, his friends and perhaps forty listeners, “they said they would help. But they’re crocodiles. Samdech Euv gave them bases. He let them use the ports. He traded rice with them. But they’re crocodiles.” Nang paused. He felt the presence of someone hostile. Khmer Viet Minh, he thought. “We gave them rice. Then they took all the girls to their camp. They killed the elders. I ran to the forest. I saw the village burn.”

“And they still keep coming,” Tam shouted. “They’ll kill us all. They keep coming.”

“They’ve overrun Svay Rieng,” someone shouted.

“They’re in Prasaut,” another called.

“Don’t forget the provinces,” called an angry third. “They’ve overrun the Northeast.”

“They’re in Kompong Thom. My uncle lives there. They demand rice. They’ll murder all Khmers.”

Each voice was angrier. Each harsher, louder, more full of hate. The chant began again, “VIET NAM QUIT CAMBODIA!” Now fifteen thousand, now eighteen thousand strong, angry, in a culture that doesn’t condone anger, angry in a culture where anger is equated with madness, angry, angrily surrounding the elegant colonial-building embassies.

“QUIT CAMBODIA!” Nang joined in the shouting. “OUT! OUT! VIET NAM OUT!” Nang worked his way to the gate. From his pocket he pulled a stone. About him, amongst the masses, monks assuaged the people as if they were sponges capable of absorbing anger. Nang cocked his arm, threw the stone as hard as he could. A window crashed. A split second of silence swept the demonstrators—then—as if the window were a dam, they gave physical vent to seventeen years of placating neutrality, seventeen years of being slowly devoured. Hell broke loose. Stones, branches, bricks from the walls were hurled. Windows on every side of both buildings were shattered. In pressed the masses, ripping shutters, crashing the doors, crossing the line, ransacking the embassies wildly in a frenzy of frustration and hate.

Nang fled.

“Did you
really
ask the Ma’dam for a commission to the Royal forces?” Thiounn asked Teck. Since the time his father had obtained a position for him in Phnom Penh Teck had not socialized with his old friends. Because of the escalating government crisis, his office had been closed. He’d returned to Neak Luong that morning, 18 March 1970.

“Of course not,” Teck said defensively. “Louis started that rumor. He...”

“I did not.” Louis laughed. He nudged Sakun and Kim and they chuckled with him. “Hey,” Louis said, “this is just like old times, eh? Five of us. We can do anything with five of us.”

“Let’s go out,” Thiounn said. “The cafe’s open.”

“I...ah,” Teck mumbled. “When Vathana gets back, eh? She won’t be long. You know, she’s taken Samnang to the doctor.”

“A commission and now a papa!” Thiounn chided him. “If we go now, we’ll get our old seats.”

Kim smirked. “I’d rather stay here and see that wife of his.”

Louis rocked back into the cushion of the sofa. “If she were mine,” he said, “I wouldn’t let her out alone. Ha! Do you remember what he said before we saw her. ‘Just a girl!’ Ha! The rest of us should be strapped to that kind of just-a-girl.”

“Loui—” Teck began, but a loud crash outside the apartment cut him short.

“This is a serious time,” Sakun said somberly. “Really. We shouldn’t joke now.”

“Oh, Sakun!” Louis flopped a hand at him. “You always get so serious.”

“You know what I hear...?”

“More news of the riots, eh?” Teck said.

“There’s been no paper for four days, but I hear anti-Viet Namese demonstrations have hit every city and town in the country. I hear people are ransacking and looting their stores. Even burning their homes.”

“Maybe...” Thiounn said quietly, thoughtfully, “...they deserve it.”

“Thiounn!” Kim reared back in his seat. “You! You, a socialist, say that?”

“I...I said maybe, eh? You’ve read the government reports. I’ve seen some of the evidence. Truly, why are there so many—so deep in the country?”

“Did you read this?” Sakun picked up a 13 March newspaper from the coffee table before the sofa. “ ‘Prime Minister Lon Nol,’ ” he read, “ ‘has extended formal apologies to the North Viet Namese and the PRG for the embassy attacks. Simultaneously, he and First Deputy Prime Minister Sisowath Sirik Matak have canceled the trade agreements between the government and the Viet Namese Communists which allow the Viet Namese to purchase food and supplies in Cambodia. The prime minister has also announced the closing of the port at Sihanoukville to Communist arms shippers; and he has issued an ultimatum to VC and NVA forces demanding they leave Cambodian territory within seventy-two hours.’ ”

“Seventy-two—” Teck blurted. “That’s impossible. How could they—”

“That’s only part of it,” Thiounn interrupted. “You haven’t followed the news, eh? Before I left the capital I heard Lon Nol had put the army on alert—to prevent Sihanouk from...well, I don’t know, exactly, what he could do from abroad...but, so Sihanouk won’t block the cabinet’s orders.”

Kim started. “Thiounn, what do you mean? I haven’t heard...”

“Well, you know...” Thiounn began.

“No. Tell us. What have you heard?”

Thiounn looked at his friends. All except Teck were seated about the coffee table in the living room of Teck’s apartment. Teck stood by the window scanning the empty street for his wife and child. “You’ve really not followed the news, eh?” No one answered. “The Prince, you’ve heard this? He has threatened to have all the cabinet officers shot.”

“What!?”

“Oh, yes. From Paris, three days ago. He said he was very embarrassed by the embassy attacks. Some say a unit of Khmer Serei, returned from South Viet Nam, was responsible for the ransacking. That the CIA and Lon Nol were behind it! Even two days ago, after Lon Nol apologized, Sihanouk said the cabinet had broken faith with him. They would be shot. That’s why the army’s on alert. I thought you knew.”

“You’re not serious,” Louis said.

“Yes. You know he’s flown to Moscow, eh? And that the National Assembly has been in special session. My father says they were going to pass a constitutional amendment limiting the monarchy, but that’s when Oum Mannorine, Sihanouk’s own brother-in-law...”

“He’s a Viet sympathizer, eh?” Sakun inserted.

Thiounn nodded, continued. “Yes. Well, he tried to take over the government but Lon Nol foiled the coup. I think it will be in all the papers tomorrow. I can hardly believe you haven’t heard any of...”

“Oum?! He tried a coup? A coup d’état?”

“Yes. Truly. But the general’s men exposed him—his dealings with the Viets and his arm’s and rice kickbacks. The Republicans are furious. Teck, don’t you talk to your father? He must know. The government is coming apart.”

“Then, Doctor, there is something...” Vathana could not complete her sentence. She sat in the small cluttered office, her torso curled forward her shoulders sagging. Sophan stood near the door, her strong square legs planted like old trees, clutching the swaddled infant as if to protect it from the doctor’s words.

“We’ll have to wait,” the doctor said. He was a middle-aged man, younger than her father by perhaps four or five years. “The brain is a marvelous instrument. It has great capacity for rejuvenation.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Well, it’s hard to say for sure. I think what happened”—the doctor paused, leaned on his small desk, shifted some papers as if trying to find the right words lying between paper clips and medical journals—“I think...You understand I wasn’t there at the birth...when the fertilized egg implanted in the uterus it lodged very low...very low. And in such a way, well, the placenta, the tissue which nourishes the fetus, developed across the cervix and that partially blocked the fetal descent.”

A loud crash was heard from the street. Then shouting. Sophan tightened her grip on the infant Samnang. Vathana slumped further, shutting out the noise. Doctor Sarin Sam Ol jumped, then settled again. Shouting in Khmer and Viet Namese continued. Then the wailing of police sirens approaching from a distance.

“Riots again, eh? This is the seventh day. Where do they find any Viet shops left to destroy? Oh...Where was I? Fetal descent...It’s a condition known as placenta previa...not really all that uncommon. At the end of your pregnancy when the cervix was very thin and beginning to dilate, the fetus was blocked from falling into the birthing canal. With the pressure on the placenta and the expanding cervix, the placenta ruptured. That’s when the mother hemorrhaged and lost so much of her bloo...”

“I’m the mother, Doctor,” Vathana whispered.

“Oh yes. Yes. I mean...I’m sorry. It’s these riots and all the talk of war and corruption. My own sons were caught in the rioting. Last night as I was plunged in meditation a great explosion shook my house. Next door a Viet Namese doctor...a very compassionate man...his family has fled toward the border even though they have lived here for three generations.”

“Our center,” Sophan broke in unexpectedly, “is overflowing with Khmers the yuons have uprooted at the border.”

“Yes. I’ve heard these things. Still, Doctor Truong was...is very decent.”

“Then...” Vathana’s voice was small.

“Then?” The doctor looked pitifully at the young mother clutching an amulet at her throat. “Then...for five hours...you understand, I wasn’t there...”

“I understand.”

“...for five hours you bled. The fetus was increasingly starved for oxygen. His brain wasn’t receiving oxygen. Had the medical team not forced you open and pulled the fetus out...neither of you would have lived.”