Highways to a War (41 page)

—She laughed. I thought she might tell me now why she’d come; but she didn’t. She looked out the door at the lights.

—I like this time of day, she said, when everyone is getting ready for the night. It was once a beautiful city at all times of day—but now it gets sad, with the refugee huts everywhere. I’d like to leave: I get more and more homesick lately.

—For Battambang? I said. Isn’t that in the Wild West?

—I was taking the mickey, but she didn’t mind: she smiled. You should go at rice harvest, she said. The plains are gold, and you can see for miles. Everyone is working together, all carrying bundles of rice, even the small children. And always the mountains in the distance. When I was a child my father told me that
neak
too lived in those mountains: the forest spirits the farmers believe in.

—I was about to offer her a chair; but now she started to walk about the room, looking at things. Every so often, light glinted on the silver belt. I waited to see what she wanted. It was quiet, and a few cyclo bells and the shouts of kids came up from below in the street. She stopped and turned to me, and said: Don’t you also miss your home?

—Sometimes I do, I said. Sometimes I miss the coolness, and the peace. But Cambodia’s my home now. I love it here.

—She frowned and cocked her head, and her tone got serious and sharp. You love Cambodia? Why do you love Cambodia? How can you love Cambodia? A country not your own. Is that possible?

—I told her that I’d felt like this from the first time I’d come here. It wasn’t easy to say why: I felt I’d always been meant to come to Cambodia. I liked the countryside; I liked the Khmer people; I liked the army troops I spent my days with. We understand each other, I said.

—That’s because you’re from a farm, she said. Here we’d call you a buffalo boy.

—I laughed; and so did she. For a moment we stood looking at each other, saying nothing. I had a sudden hollowing in the stomach: something that only happens to me nowadays in a firefight. Still she didn’t say what she wanted. She’d stopped in front of my big Khmer sandstone sculpture of the Goddess of Fortune: the best piece I have. This is a nice Lakshmi, she said, and looked at me over her shoulder.

—Again there was a silence that neither of us broke. She was looking at me as though seeing me for the first time; as though she was digesting some surprise. But perhaps I imagined it—or wanted to imagine it. From down in the street, the voices of kids, car engines and cyclo bells still floated up. I reminded myself that this was the Stringer: a girl of only twenty-four, inclined to act the clown: Dmitri’s friend, and much too young for either of us. In all the months that she and I had been running into each other at the Press Center-usually with Dmitri there too—there’d been no warning of what was happening now. In the half-dark, I was looking at a woman I’d never seen before. Beautiful: so beautiful. She’d changed everything around her, making the air in the room seem to sing. A strand of hair had come away from the comb on top of her head and hung down her cheek; I wanted to push it back.

—She cleared her throat, and looked at the Lakshmi again. A pity she’s lost an arm, she said, and her voice sounded smaller, as if it came from a distance. Does she bring you luck?

—I believe so, I said. I touch her every time I leave to go into the field.

—You’re superstitious. But perhaps Lakshmi does look after you, she said. That’s why you’re
Mean Samnang.
Isn’t that what the soldiers call you?

—She went on moving about the room, still not saying why she’d called. I had prints of some of my recent pictures pinned to a board in a corner: some fairly heavy action against the Khmer Rouge at Neak Luong, and shots of peasants in the region leaving their farms, marching away in line across a paddy field in pajamas and sarongs and checked
kramas,
carrying their bundles and their children. She stopped in front of these and looked at them for a long time; then she turned and said: No one else takes pictures like these. I remember your cover on the American newsweekly: the little boy with the flag being killed. Everyone talks about that picture.

—There are plenty of photographers as good, I told her.

—No, you’re the best, she said. I like the way you show the Khmer people.

—They’ve lost their farms, I said, and I pointed to the peasants in the picture. They don’t know where they’re going. Fishing and the rice harvest, their own plot of land and the pagoda: that’s their life, that’s what matters to them—not money or politics. And there they go, I said: now they’ve got nothing. The Americans and the Cambodian Air Force bomb them; the rich genenals and politicians in Phnom Penh take it for granted that their sons will do the fighting. Now the Khmer Rouge take their land and smash their pagodas. I want to show what’s happening to them, I said. They have to pick up and keep on, no matter what comes. It’s always been like that for farmers. Nothing shows them much mercy; nothing ever has. But in my country, it’s only the weather and the market and the banks that farming people have to worry about—not the North Vietnamese Army or the Khmer Rouge or American bombing.

—She sat down in one of the cane chairs without speaking: straight-backed, hands folded. I sat down opposite, and waited. Then she said: This is why I’ve come to see you: because you talk like this. Everyone says Mike Langford never gets angry, never gets involved. But I think you’re full of anger, and many other feelings. I hear many things about you.

—I asked her what things.

—She laughed. Don’t look worried—nothing bad, she said. People in the Army tell me about you. My father was a battalion commander: a good and honest commander, and he had good friends. They still visit me and watch out for me, and some of them are officers who know you. They say that you care about our struggle. They say that in the field you carry two canteens—one for yourself, one to give water to our wounded and dying. And they say that often you help carry away our wounded, instead of taking pictures. Other foreign photographers just take their pictures and go back to Hotel Royal and the bars; that’s all they care about. You are different.

—I’m there to get the pictures like they are, I told her. I help with the wounded if there’s no backup: that’s all. Can I offer you a drink? A brandy?

—She shook her head, smiling as though I was trying to take her mind off some purpose: a purpose we both knew about.

—Most correspondents have no respect for our Government at all, she said. Have they? They say that Lon Nol’s forces will lose the war because they are too corrupt: I know. And of course that’s mostly right. Lon Nol is a criminal and a cretin.

—She looked down into her lap; then she looked up again quickly. Her eyes gleamed, and I saw that she was suddenly angry. It was the sort of anger that could make you nervous: it had that special intensity that suddenly flares up in Cambodians.

—He lies and says we’re winning, she said, and tells the Americans what they want to hear. And all the time his palace generals steal the pay of our troops. Those bastards will never save us.

—Maybe not, I said. Maybe it’s too late. Is that what you think?

—But she shook her head many times, making her hair swing. No, she said. No. It must not be too late. People here in Phnom Penh don’t understand what the Khmer Rouge will be like. They never see them, so they pretend they will not be so bad: maybe that they don’t even exist. Like the
neak taa,
perhaps: just ghosts. The Others! They’re not like the North Vietnamese. Do you know what things those Others are doing in the villages, if the people oppose them?

—I’ve been in a village where that had happened, said. Yes, I know.

—There are still good commanders like my father, she said. I think you know this too. I tell you: they can still beat the Khmer Rouge, men like that. I’d like you to meet one of them. He is one of the best, and he was my father’s great friend. That’s why I’ve come here to see you. I hope you don’t mind: I think you’d like him. Will you do that? Will you meet him?

—I said I’d be happy to.

—He’s a commandant—a battalion commander. Ung Chandara is honest; he believes in our country. You could visit his battalion down in Takeo. I’ve spoken about it to him: he wants to get to know you.

—That’s good of you, I said. But you haven’t said why.

—Major Chandara will tell you himself, she said. And now I should go.

—She stood up, and began to walk off towards the door. I switched on a table lamp, and followed her to see her out. She paused by my desk, smiling as though at her own thoughts. It was very hot and still, and I could feel the sweat breaking out on my face; I wiped it away.

—So neat, she said. It’s all so neat in here. Do you have a good servant?

—No, l told her, I look after myself.

—And you live all alone, she said. She shook her head, pursing her lips: mocking. Not so Lucky One.

—I reached out and pushed back the strand of hair from her cheek. Her eyes widened, she lowered her lids for a moment, then smiled as though nothing had happened. You need a wife to manage things, she said. But maybe you already have one.

—She picked up the framed photograph of Claudine I keep on the desk. I think this is your Saigon wife, she said. The one Dmitri’s told me about.

—We’re not married, I told her. She’s an old friend.

—I know that, she said, and she shook her head, studying the picture. Just as well—I think she looks too old for you.

—I said nothing to this, and she put the picture down and turned quickly. Most of her movements were quick, causing a fragrance to float up from the neck of her blouse: sandalwood, making me giddy. Her skin dark honey against the clean white.

—Goodbye, she said, and gave me her hand: formal and French. I’m sorry for coming here without warning you. But you’ll like Major Chandara, I know it.

—She disappeared down the stairs very quickly, the way she does everything. I stood there, feeling the heavy heat suddenly press down on me in a wave. I walked about the room for a bit, sweating, not able to sit still. Then I went out and headed for one of the bars by the river.

—I can still smell her scent. Maybe not sandalwood at all, but her body’s real odor.

Harvey pushes another photograph across the table.

“Here we are, Ray,” he says. “Major Ung Chandara, with Mike. Jim took this, somewhere in Takeo Province. That was Chandara’s patch, down there in Takeo, near the Vietnam border. His division was the Seventh. Their task was to defend Highway 2—a pretty thankless one, by 1973; it was going fast.”

He picks up the picture, studying it. “Chandara was a serious man,” he says. “You can see that, can’t you? Not: a dandy—not one of your Captain Samphans. An intelligent, serious, incorruptible officer in the corrupt Lon Nol Army. A patriot. What a fate. Life dealt him a difficult hand, right?” He passes the picture
¹
back. “Now he’s sitting up there on the Thai-Cambodian border, in charge of that hopeless resistance movement: the Free Khmer. Proud: never doubting they’ll come back in the end. Poor bastard.”

Langford and Major Chandara both look into the camera close up, a bank of trees behind them. Mike is bare-headed; Chandara wears a beret and a plain military shirt with no visible insignia. He’s around forty, with features that have a strongly Chinese cast: a Sino-Khmer, like Ly Keang. He looks wiry and fit, and is almost as tall as Mike. The eyes are penetrating and wide-set, and the hard-ruled Mongolian line of the upper lids makes them severe. A warrior’s eyes, yet also the eyes of a thinker. The lips, beneath a military mustache, are firm but delicately drawn. An interesting face: formidable yet sympathetic.

“Of all Mike’s friendships in Indochina,” Harvey is saying, “this one became the most important. I can tell you a little about Chandara: not much. He was something of a law unto himself. Trevor Griffiths used to call him a ‘warlord’: exaggerated, of course, but there was something in it. Some of those battalion commanders did function rather like feudal barons in their particular regions, and their obedience to President Lon Nol and his corrupt palace generals was capricious—depending on the amount of graft allowed them, or whether they felt it tactically reasonable to obey.

“According to Langford, Chandara never took graft. Mike always spoke of him with great admiration: he used to describe him as ‘the best field commander in Cambodia.’ Other commanders were building luxury villas in Phnom Penh with their ill-gotten gains, but Major Chandara’s family home in Phnom Penh was modest, Mike told me, and he was devoted to his wife and children. The sex parties with bar girls that other officers were addicted to were not for him. And he pursued the enemy at every opportunity, leading a Spartan life in the field; risking his life almost daily.

“It was a life that Langford began to share more and more, disappearing down in Takeo for weeks at a time. This began soon after I arrived, in the early months of seventy-three. So Mike was doing what he’d done all those years ago with Captain Trung’s unit, down in the Delta.

“Do you see? Didn’t I tell you he was always trying to replace things?”

TAPE 43, MARCH 25TH, 1973

—Major Chandara’s base camp was set up in a village a few kilometers southeast of Takeo city: right on the edge of Khmer Rouge territory. When I went down there yesterday, he took a company out into the flat, open country there that stretches to the Vietnam border. I went with them.

—I’d had to get to the post by Cambodian Army helicopter, since the situation on Highway 2 is changing every day. The Khmer Rouge have launched a major onslaught in Takeo Province: they’re trying to get control of the whole of Highway 2 as well as Highway 1, and cut the link with Saigon.

—We ran into a group of them late in the afternoon. The engagement was successful for Chandara’s troops, and the Khmer Rouge pulled out; he’s a very able commander. But there were many wounded to take back, as well as the dead. Cambodian troops will never leave their dead: they carry them out no matter what the risk, since the enemy mutilate them. The Khmer Rouge do this because Buddhists believe that any mutilations and deformities will go with them into the afterlife. I’m beginning to hate the Khmer Rouge.