For the Sake of All Living Things (79 page)

“Hello! Hello! Colonel Nui! It’s me, Chhuon. Hello!”

“Ssshh!”

“Oh! Excuse me! Hello. Is the colonel in?”

“Please, Chairman Cahuom.” Nui’s wife spoke in a hush. “Both little ones are asleep. You understand. They’ve got the fever.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. My husband’s in camp tonight. I’ve just gotten the littlest one to sleep. Please, come tomorrow.”

“Of course. Please accept my...What was that!”

“Don’t wake the children!”

“I’m sorry. I heard a small explosion. Let me go investigate.”

The Khmer Krahom regimental task force had crossed the Kong River just north of the ruins of Phum Sath Nan. There they set up a bivouac in a small, tight canyon about a trickling rocky creek. Four battalions strong, they packed the canyon, concentrated yet hidden, like a nest of bees.

“Our task,” Ngoc Minh said, “is to prepare for the orderly transfer of administrative control.” Nang nodded. He did not answer. His lethargy, his foot dragging, antagonized Ngoc Minh, the new regimental political officer. Again, as an outcome of the Stung Treng meetings, the Krahom armies had reorganized to a higher level. The battalions that first had been seen during Chenla II were now clustered under loose regimental command. The independent insurgent squads of the recent past had become main force units. Though the units did not have the rear-echelon personnel and logistics support of modern armies, they did have the intelligence and command support structures.

“Met Nang,” Ngoc Minh called the youngest battalion leader. They had been together since their provisional induction into the Khmer Communist Party. “You seem preoccupied.”

Nang grunted. He did not like Ngoc Minh, did not like his mixed ancestry. Yet, before the other unit commanders and the regimental staff, he did not wish to provoke Ngoc Minh’s animosity. Instead he raised his half-coconut shell and sipped the sugary palm juice. Duch, Nang’s radioman, nudged him. The silence about the command post was as oppressive as the humidity in the shadowy canyon.

“Nang!” Ngoc Minh snapped. “Your battalion will...”

“I was thinking,” Nang interrupted, “of Mita and Horl. Such heroes.”

“It’s time you thought of this operation,” Ngoc Minh said flatly.

“There’s time.” Nang answered as if his inner clock had run down. “Patience, Minh,” he said softly.

“We must advance,” Minh countered. “The path to success is through unremitting patriotic struggle.”

“Ngoc Minh,” Nang said. “You are strictly a political struggler. Your achievements are impressive and your revolutionary spirit is beyond question. I am but a soldier. I remember those who fell in battle when the situation was not favorable.” Nang sipped from his shell. He smiled gently. His eyes were bright, shining, hiding the ice coursing in his veins, covering the schemes hatching in his mind. “My orders are first to make contact with the local resistance. Eventually we shall regain the lost people and the lost land.”

Nang rose. Met Nhel, the regiment’s commanding officer, rose too. Nhel was not a combat veteran and had received his position on the basis of his long membership in the Party. In 1970, he had organized the communal conversion of villages near Rovieng, seventy kilometers north of Kompong Thom, in the first district entirely controlled by the Khmer Krahom. During and after the Northern Corridor fighting, Nhel’s communities received most of the evacuees, processed them and expanded. All was done away from the ground fighting though there had been sporadic, terrifying bombings. Met Nhel dreaded the new assignment.

Nhel walked behind Nang as Nang meandered to the trailhead which would take him to the 104th area. “You know this area,” Nhel said. “You should be the one to make contact.”

“We’ve no preparation. Where are the files?”

Duch joined them as they slowly walked to the creek then climbed the slippery rocks heading back into the ravine. “The Center is sending them,” Nhel said. “We move faster than they, eh?”

“Then we must stop,” Nang said. To Duch he added, “Go to Met Eng. Tell him Angkar needs a spy.” Nang stopped in the creekbed and let Duch pass. Alone with Nhel he whispered, “Ngoc Minh, if he stays there will be no success. If he goes, we lose nothing.”

For ten days the regimental task forcer sat, hid, cramped in the gorge with few rations, few comforts. The young yotheas became restless. Each day they cleaned their weapons and ammunition and sat. At dusk they swatted mosquitos and retreated into night darkness, into their lonesome existence. Each morning Eng ran a political education class for the 104th in which he extolled the virtues of work, order, discipline and celibacy. The soldiers drank from the trickling rill, turned rocks to find tiny clams to eat, washed their kramas and themselves and grew hungrier and wilder. Nhel attempted to ameliorate the friction between Nang and Ngoc Minh and between Ngoc Minh and Von, one of Nang’s
yotheas
in the Northern Corridor fighting and now commanding officer of the 81st Battalion, but his efforts were to no avail. Each day the innuendos grew coarser and more blatant. “I’ve heard,” Ngoc Minh said sincerely to Nhel in the presence of the battalion commanders and regimental staff, “if a soldier is wounded twice he becomes overly cautious, even cowardly.” Before Nhel could answer, Nang snickered to Von, “How would he know?”

Then the runners arrived. Not one, but a squad—messengers, armed yotheas, a guide-scout and eleven porters. With them were carefully prepared maps of the area with NVA installations marked and quantified. Included were detailed orders and directions: contact the local resistance; supply them with the weapons the porters carry; organize them, use them, take control; reconnoiter the area; plan the attack; prepare the battlefield. Then wait. Do not attack until the NVA has committed itself to the new offensive in the South. At that time, your mission is to strike at the NVA, liberate the Khmer villages and return the people to the Northern Zone for protection. With the orders was a file box of dossiers on resistance, village and enemy leaders.

With Nhel, Ngoc Minh and the others, Nang reviewed the dossiers. Lieutenant Colonel Nui’s file was the thickest and on the jacket there was a yellow X, marking him for elimination. Another folder described Political Officer Trinh, and a third Deputy Political Officer Trinh Le. Both folders carried the yellow X. A thin dossier had been compiled on Committee Member Hang Tung. This one was marked with an asterisk. Files on Ny Non Chan, Maha Vanatanda, and Cahuom Chhuon were like marked. A packet of folders wrapped in red cellophane were designated by a symbol which to Nang looked like a tower of the Angkor ruins. In the packet were details on Kpa, Sakhron, Cahuom Sam and Neang Thi Sok.

Nang swallowed. He did not speak, did not allow his recognition, his shock, to show. Yet inside the names seemed to crash against the side of his brain. Chhuon! Sok! Sam!

Chhuon bowed his head before the small sun-dappled spirit house in front of his home. Within his mind he muttered, I shall become enlightened for the sake of all living things. He raised his head and straightened a tiny plaited curtain on which a picture of Buddha in the lotus position, had been painted. He whispered a prayer. “Lord Buddha, Enlightened One, Blessed One, I have destroyed a man’s foot. For this I am sorry; For this I am guilty. What is the right path for my life? Angel Spirit, protect my home and my family.”

“Uncle.” Hang Tung had approached silently from behind. It was unusual to see him during the midday rest period. His singular utterance betrayed his nervousness and irritability. With each soldier withdrawn, with each AA gun moved east, with the continuing reduction of the NVA camp, Hang Tung’s nervousness had become more and more manifest. “Uncle,” Tung repeated. “You must join me.”

Hang Tung said no more. He motioned for Chhuon to follow him to his office in the old pagoda. Chhuon’s mind raced wildly, searching for a reason for Tung’s silence. Immediately he thought of his night rendezvous with Kpa. There had been no exchange. Only a message. “Do not launch an assault until the yuon army commits itself in the South.”

“Kpa,” Chhuon had asked, “what does this mean?”

“I can’t tell you,” the mountain boy had said. “Only we have new weapons. Gifts from the Kampuchean Patriots Liberation Front.”

Chhuon’s mind jumped track. Seed, he thought. We’ve gotten the new seed and Hang Tung wants to organize the first planting so the seedlings will be ready in May. Too early. Much too early. What have they discovered? Do not think. I am a stone. Do not betray yourself. “Nephew,” Chhuon said as they reached the pagoda steps, “have we received new seed? We must have a better strain than last year’s.”

“Oh,” Tung said slyly, “this has nothing to do with that. Cadreman Trinh wishes to speak with you. That’s all.” Hang Tung escorted Chhuon to Trinh’s small office. Then he left. Trinh was not in.

For three hours Chhuon sat, waited, alone. At first he glanced about the windowless cubicle. The walls were bare except for portraits of Norodom Sihanouk and Ho Chi Minh. The small desk was full yet orderly. In each of the upper corners were two perfectly aligned stacks of papers. To the right were five ballpoint pens, parallel and squared. At the upper center edge were two eraser pencils with brushes and between, twenty paper clips evenly spaced, and forty overlapping rubber bands laid out as two flowers. Chhuon counted the pens, the clips, the rubber bands. He visually measured the stacks. Each was precisely the same height. He recounted, remeasured, relooked and renoted. Then there was nothing to do. His mind jumped to his guilts—to Kdeb and Yani whom he’d abandoned, to the soldiers his boobytrap had killed, to his inaction at the river when Chamreum and San were gas-ragged to death. He thought of Ry, of the NVA soldier she’d entertained and of his corpse which had lain only a few meters from where he now sat. Then he thought of Kpa, of Vanatanda, of Sam, of the foot he’d helped blow to pieces and of his ruse with Nui’s wife and his insincere assistance with the shrieking young soldier as other Viets had loaded him into a jeep to be rushed to the headquarters hospital.

Chhuon sweated. The sweat poured from him in rivers as it might from a fat man exercising for the first time on a hot tropical day. He fidgeted. He squirmed like a seven-year-old who needs to urinate but who has been ordered to sit for punishment for a transgression he can no longer recall. Then Chhuon froze. I am a stone, he said in his mind. A pebble. An insignificant pebble.

“Chairman Cahuom.” Trinh finally entered. “Do you have your papers with you? Are you all right? You look ill.”

“Fine. Fine. I’m fine.”

“Have you been here long?” Trinh asked pleasantly.

“For a little while,” Chhuon answered.

Trinh smiled. For three hours he had watched through a peephole as Chhuon had squirmed. “There are to be new papers.” Trinh smiled. “New passes. Everything will be color coded. A good idea, eh?”

“Ah...yes. I’m certain it is. I’m afraid I didn’t bring mine. Tung startled me while I was cleaning by my home. I thought it was urgent. I didn’t go back in.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Actually I wanted to talk to you about other matters. There are enemy agents and spies in the village.”

“Here?!”

“Yes.” Trinh leaned toward Chhuon. In a harsh whisper he said, “We know who they are.” Then he leaned back. “What would you do with them?”

“I, ah...I...I don’t know.”

“Hiding an enemy is punishable by death.” Trinh smiled a forced, tight smirk. “If someone knows a spy and doesn’t come forward, both will be eliminated.”

“Surely,” Chhuon tittered nervously, “you don’t suspect any of the villagers.”

“Yes. That’s exactly whom I suspect. There have been nine incidents of violence this year. Poor Sergeant Doan lost a foot. These are manifestations of narrow-minded nationalism.”

“Let me talk to the people,” Chhuon said. “Let me talk to the quadrant chairman and the association leaders. Certainly we can stop this.”

“Yes. That may help. Talk tonight. Tonight we’ll have a village assembly.”

As the sun set villagers began congregating before the old wat. Along the village street militiamen posted kerosene torches and connected these with a long red cordon tape. On the steps Cahuom Chhuon reevaluated his opening remarks. More villagers arrived. Some straggled in, others came en masse with their quadrant group or production group or age or sex or trade association group. For a few it was a festive time, a time to rest, to talk with neighbors whom they seldom saw anymore because of the arduous work schedules, but for most it was another imposition on their limited time with their families. Most dragged themselves in without enthusiasm, expecting nothing other than perhaps a new, tightening of some minor regulation—just one more thing to endure, to repress, to drive them mad.

The meeting began. Chairman Cahuom, standing before Colonel Nui., Cadreman Trinh and Hang Tung, explained about the new passes and papers. Then, for a long moment, he stood silent. He seemed to be looking for a face in the crowd. The yellow torchlight danced and trembled on the few brown faces turned up, glimmered off the few hung heads with just-washed hair, seemed almost like a cloud sinking to the rounded shoulders of the workers, settling there, one more weight. Chhuon cleared his throat, began to speak, but no sound emerged. He cleared his throat again. People stilled. “There is amongst us...,” Chhuon began, but again he stopped. “I am told...” He abandoned that opening. “You all know me,” he said. “You know that what I have done, what I do, I do for the good of the village. You know I’m a devout Buddhist.” In the crowd all motion stopped as if the yellow glow from the torches had gelled and encased them in a clear acrylic block. “Today, I have been informed there are enemy agents amongst us. Spies who endanger the village and our lives by their activities. Saboteurs who plant bombs which threaten the lives of our children as well as those of our village militia and the protection forces. This situation, these activities, are very serious. Crimes of sabotage, of hiding enemy agents, will be dealt with most severely. I have asked Cadreman Trinh and Colonel Nui to establish a lenient amnesty program for any villager who has, in the past, committed a crime against the people and who, by tomorrow night, comes forward and makes a full confession.”