For the Sake of All Living Things (62 page)

“You are very wise for one so young.” The man smiled broadly.

“This chief,” Nang said, “he serves the Viet Namese and the governor, eh? And he drinks alcohol? He is very evil, eh?”

“He is always drunk.” The elder laughed.

“My father, who is now with Lord Buddha, used to say of drunks, ‘The way they act is to renounce their humanity.’ You will help Han change this man, eh?”

“I’m a poor man.” The elder giggled. “I must support my family.”

“We’ll change that,” Nang said. “All Khmers should share in the country’s wealth. We’ll change the village chief, too, eh? You help me, eh?”

The elder became more formal. “For many years the peasants want to change this man. Ote Samrin wants him to change, too. If you change him, how will Ote Samrin look? How will I look to my people?”

“Ote Samrin is humiliated because he has no effect. You shall be honored because you are with us. Look there.” Nang pointed into the gray drizzle where two vehicles were emerging. “For all eternity—” Nang began. Suddenly the lead vehicle blasted its horn. Three water buffalo had climbed, had been driven, from one paddy up the dike to the raised gravel road. The lead vehicle’s horn blared in repeated bursts. Two small boys whipped the buffalos with marsh reed switches. Nang laughed and Han and the old man joined in. The horns of both cars honked. The lead driver hung his head out the window, screamed at the urchins to clear their beasts from his path. The two boys ran into the paddy. “For all eternity...” Nang laughed loudly. Behind them on the hamlet street a dozen women had converged to witness the commotion and in the paddies the peasants straightened their backs. Suddenly a massive fireball tossed the rear vehicle into the air, then the noise and concussion slammed the viewers. Doors of the lead vehicle sprang open. Five armed men emerged running, clutching their weapons, running, collapsing to a fusillade unheard at the hamlet gate. Then the distant report of small arms fire reached the elder. Nang completed his sentence in an embittered tone, “...our blood will call for revenge.”

The old man no longer smiled. A large mob had grown in the hamlet street. Han stood shocked. His boys had delivered a diversion but neither they nor he had known for what. Nang turned to the mob. He grasped the trembling hand of the old man beside him, lifted it, held it high, then yelled as loudly and as enthusiastically as his voice would stretch, “From henceforth and for all eternity Phum Voa Yeav shall be protected by the Organization. By Angkar. Never again shall you pay taxes to the henchmen of Lon Nol or the lackeys of the yuons.”

From the fields about the wreckage of the cars two squads emerged; emerged like wraiths from a fog, emerged, walked, fourteen armed black-clad boys in single file, down the dike road toward Phum Voa Yeav.

The preparation for the takeover of Phum Voa Yeav had been complete enough that, in the absence of NVA support, before night had fallen twice all four hamlets and the village center had been subjugated by Krahom soldiers. Immediately the fence sitters acquiesced to the slogan, “Independence, national sovereignty, self-reliance and revolutionary violence.” Within another day Phum Voa Yeav had fallen under the spell of Wise Little Rabbit, and the village provided Nang and the Krahom with a platoon of stragglers and porters. Phase one, eliminate government control, was complete. Now Nang would implement the next phase, for which he’d prepared for almost a year.

Nang approached the FANK LP, the listening post, on the southeast flank of the column’s night logger. There was no moon and the ground was blanketed with a layer of mist, a fog which started just above his head and was perhaps three meters thick. Above the mist the night was crystal clear, yet below, the world was close and black.

He could hear the FANK troops moving, restless, afraid but not disciplined, most not even trained to be silent and still. They talked loudly, as if by giving away their position they would make any enemy closing on Kompong Thom circumvent the LP and target a main garrison. Nang pulled, pushed, prodded his three-boy team. Twenty meters from the FANK LP they settled, rested, waited, listening until the nationals were silent, asleep. At two in the morning Nang advanced, emerged within the LP’s perimeter as he had done so often, emerged to wake the sergeant in charge.

“ssst!”

“Huh! Huh! Who’s there?”

“ssshh. sakhon, it’s me, number two rabbit.”

“Oh! You did it again; Ha! What do you have for me? It’s been a long time.”

“tonight, the best present of all.”

“You brought a girl?!” The sergeant laughed out loud and several others awoke.

“tonight i bring liberation, tonight i bring angkar. come with me. i’ll show you.”

“Should I wake the others?”

“yes. ask them if they wish to come, all can come but only if they do so of their own free will.”

Without fear of making noise the sergeant passed amongst his small perimeter waking the tired, underfed and unpaid FANK soldiers. “Rise up. We’re moving.”

“Augh, Sergeant Brother—” one began, but Sakhon silenced him with, “Number Two Rabbit wants us to follow.”

The soldiers packed up and followed Nang into the blackness, each troop holding the man to his front, none knowing their small column included three armed yotheas of Angkar. Nang led them circuitously toward their garrison subpost, closer and closer, led them down animal paths and along raised treelines and finally through flooded paddies where the water had risen to waist high.

“sakhon, you and i shall go inside, the others must wait.”

“Rabbit, I can’t go in before dawn.”

“we’ll be quiet, we won’t wake the officer, i want to talk to brother yu and uncle neth. i’ve so much to give.”

Quietly Nang and Sakhon approached the perimeter. In a minute they stood with the sentries, two who recognized Number Two Rabbit. A minute later Nang, Sakhon and four sentries, the only other men awake in the subpost, were chattering quietly and opening the main gate.

In the paddies Eng slithered to the last concealment opposite the gate. Behind him Soth, Horl and eighteen men and boys, yotheas, porters and vassals, lay in the wet awaiting the signal. A softening of the misty shroud, first light, spread across the sky. Still no signal. The shroud grayed. At the gate two sentries emerged, unarmed, smoking cigarettes. They sat on their heels and stared across the lower black earth. Eng crept forth. In line with him came six armed yotheas creeping like one long segmented animal until they were a stone’s throw from the FANK gate and the sentries. Nang appeared at the garrison gate, squatted between the sentries. He pointed quietly, grunted, finally lifted one guard’s hand and pointed it toward Eng’s position. On that signal, Eng rose, walked forward, bowed to the FANK soldiers and said, “Follow me.” The two sentries left their post.

In the paddies the six yotheas stood, came to Nang, followed him into the garrison. As they entered, a group of five FANK soldiers, armed and with full gear, followed Met Soth out the gate. Then a second group of five followed Met Rong. In the billet area Sakhon and the two sentries woke soldiers one by one and told them to gather their entire issue. One by one the FANK troops obeyed until sixty soldiers had been woken, dressed, armed, and led off in groups of five, led first to Eng’s waiting squad where they were given rice balls, then away, north, with their weapons, meeting up with the troops from the LP, whispering phrases of purity, sovereignty and independence.

By dawn the garrison soldiers were six kilometers from their base, six kilometers and a light-year, surrounded by welcoming peasant-soldiers armed to the hilt.

“Many of you know me as Rabbit.” Nang spoke clearly. “I am Met Nang. You are welcome to join our Organization. Today I will ask you to give us your hearts and arms and we shall lead you to our forest home. I ask you to give me two days. If then you do not wish to join us, you may return to your Kompong Thom fortress.”

In a temporary treeline reindoctrination camp west of Phum Voa Yeav, the sixty-four FANK “volunteers” were treated as if they were lost sheep, as if they were brothers returned. Nang did all he could to impress them.

“How many of you have M-16 rifles?” Nang smiled. He knew only half a dozen could raise their hands. “With Angkar each shall have this.” He held up a Soviet Kalashnikov assault rifle. A yothea plant applauded and the FANK troops joined in. “Look at this,” Nang sneered. He lifted a 1916 Berthier 8mm rifle. “What poor rascal was forced to carry this antique? He had thirty-one cartridges. How would he get more?”

For three hours Nang spoke. “Angkar’s goal is a pure and classless society,” he told them. “Our soldiers are instruments of the Organization. They are heros of Kampuchean nationalism. It is their patriotic endeavor to roll with the Wheel of History.” Each word he spoke, each phrase Eng added, each act of encouragement the yotheas gave out was full of enthusiasm. The yotheas and cadre of Angkar ate with the volunteers, slept with them; led them on patrols. After two days the city militiamen were asked to choose: remain with Angkar for Kampuchean independence or return to the lackey puppet forces of the imperialist warmongers; vow poverty, chastity, obedience and hard work in the service of the people, the nation and Angkar or return to the graft, patronage, lust and sloth of Kompong Thom; usher in a millennium of happiness or sell the country into bondage.

Two thirds chose to take the vow, “I am desire not contrary to duty. I will do whatever Angkar asks. I will die for Angkar if it is so deemed.”

A third turned back to Kompong Thom, unharmed and unarmed. Before they reached the garrison, a second and third subpost were emptied. By the second week of September 1971, the Krahom army of the North could boast of new summer recruitment or conscription of nearly three thousand FANK militiamen, village men, boys and girls. Phase two, expand the army, was well under way.

A pull on his arm. Nang jerked fiercely. Again the tug. In the blackness of their hiding place Nang cocked his arm, ready to bludgeon the small boy. Nang’s chest tightened as he coiled.

Then he relaxed. Slowly he moved his hand forward, his index finger extended, stiff as a teak twig. His fingertip touched hair; he slid it down to, into, the little boy’s ear. Slowly he pushed. The boy’s head rolled with the pressure. Nang continued pushing. The boy’s body shifted. Soundlessly Nang bore down, pushing, pushing, the boy fell to his side on wet earth yet uttered not even the faintest whimper. Like a ballet couple, Nang flowed with him, pressing harder and harder, his fingertip jamming into the little boy’s ear canal. The boy’s head shuddered beneath the pressure, his body shook, he kicked his feet, clamped his teeth.

The commotion brought Eng. Almost imperceptibly he whispered, “stop!”

Nang halted. His finger was buried to the first joint in the flesh of the ear. Slowly he eased the force, withdrew the shaft and returned to his position.

Krahom recruitment success had created, in Nang’s mind, unwieldy problems that came close to outweighing the gain. First and foremost in his thoughts were the crybabies. “Just let us do the job,” he’d told Met Nim, a runner from Met Sar. “Half these runts need their mothers.”

“Train them, Met Nang. We must increase the army. Keep the young ones separate. Let them serve you in the most desperate situations.”

“Indeed!” Nang had uttered the one word. He understood. On line to his right, now, were four of these small children, tiny boys and girls trained by sugar and stick to mindless obedience. Nang thought bitterly about Nim’s directive. Further expand the army! he thought. Weaken it! Dilute it! Nang hated it. Feared it. It would destroy him. To him Kampuchea needed but a small, well-disciplined elite.

The second problem concerned the liberated hamlets north of Kompong Thom City. The NVA had shifted south and left their Khmer Viet Minh village cadre behind to control the people. When the Krahom moved into old NVA positions, the Khmer Viet Minh were caught between nationalist and internationalist Communist ideologies. Met Nim had simply given Nang the order: “Clean the Brotherhood of the Pure. Once our enemies are engaged we must have no inner contradictions sapping our energy or blocking its flow. Eliminate contradictions.”

Now, before him, them, sitting on stilts high above the ground, was the house of Ote Samrin. Nang lifted the boy he’d staked to the ground. “Now,” he said. “For Kampuchea. You will be known as a national hero.”

Down the line Eng told a six-year-old girl, “Soon you will see Buddha. He will dress you in white and you will eat the finest rice.”

To Nang the little boy cried, “I’m afraid.”

“Afraid! Afraid of what?”

Nang expected the boy to say, “Afraid of dying,” or “Afraid it will hurt.”

“I’m afraid of ghosts,” the boy said. “If I go will I get a ghost-face like you?”

“Angkar”—Nang’s voice was hard—“is greater than all ghosts. Angkar protects you.”

The little boy and little girl stood. Between them two toddlers rose. They grasped hands, sidled forth toward the base of the ladder leading to Ote Samrin’s house. The boy trailed a cord. The six-year-old girl began to climb but immediately Mister Ote’s bodyguard heard them and shone a flashlight down. “Halt! Who are you?”

“Mother’s ill, Uncle. We’ve come to get Grandpa.”

“Don’t move.” There was bustling on the platform but nothing to be seen. The little girl led her “brothers” up a few more rungs. “Halt, damn you.” The flashlight flicked on again. “Mister Ote lives here. Who’s your grandfather?” The toddlers began to whine. “Oh, come up. In this blackness it’s a wonder you found any house at all.”

As the girl topped the ladder she called loudly, “Grandpa?”

Nang began to count, “twenty, nineteen, eighteen....”

“Come here, child,” the bodyguard said.

“...thirteen, the toddlers should be up. nine, eight...”

“What are you carrying?”

“A basket for Grandpa.”

“I’m not your grandpa,” Ote Samrin said, coming onto the porch with a lantern. “I’m...”

“...two. one...” The boy was up. “zero.” Nang smacked the clacker. The boy exploded. The fireball and concussion detonated the other children and as their bodies were being thrown by the first blast they too exploded, blowing up with them the entire house, the bodyguard, Ote Samrin, his family and the KVM presence from Phum Voa Yeav. Phase three, eliminate contradictory elements, was complete.