For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Someday it will,” Chhuon said. He tried to speak to his children in an educated manner, almost as equals, keeping in mind the importance of setting a good example. “Someday we’ll build hydroelectric dams—one on the San, one on the Kong. Perhaps with the Laotians a giant one across the Mekong. Then all this territory will have abundant electric power and we’ll be able to regulate the flow of the water for the farmers to irrigate new lands. Someday, Cambodia will be a very wealthy nation.”

  “Not the Srepok?” Samnang asked.

  “No. The valley’s too broad on this side of the border. South of Lomphat where it crosses into Viet Nam, there’s a hydroelectric dam. Just west of Ban Me Thuot. You know that city?”

  “Yes. When Samay enters Sangha, will he study about the land or only about religion?”

  Chhuon glanced at Samnang. Perhaps, he thought, Samnang will feel that loss more than any other family member. “I don’t know. Do you think someday you’ll follow him?”

  “No way!” Samnang said.

  “No way!?” Chhuon repeated the Western idiom which had crept into use with schoolchildren.

  “I mean, ‘No, Father.’ I don’t believe a religious life is for me.”

  “Every generation of our family has had at least one son follow the path into the monastic life,” Chhuon said. “My eldest brother left our home when I was six. It’s a noble calling. Only within monastic life can perfect awareness be gained. Only then can people learn from the monk the path to deliverance from suffering.”

  “Oh Papa, people will continue to suffer. You’re the holy man. Your work feeds more than all the monks.”

  “Ha! Who tells you that?”

  “You’re educated. You read. You travel. The village farmers look up to you.”

  The words embarrassed Chhuon. “We’re talking different kinds of suffering,” he said. He was pleased that his son respected him, yet he was upset that Samnang was so secular. His own son seemed a symbol of the transitions occurring within Cambodia. “Life is suffering,” Chhuon said. “Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering. The presence of material things we hate is suffering, and to be separated from objects we desire is suffering. For our wishes not to be met is suffering. Suffering ceases only when we no longer crave...”

  Samnang hung his head. Chhuon’s sermons made him shrink. At his father’s next pause he said simply, “I don’t think I should become a monk.”

  “Follow your heart,” Chhuon answered. “My soul is filled with joy at Samay’s choice. Though I...I’ll miss him.”

  “Papa,” Samnang said sharply, “I don’t understand why, when a boy enters the Sangha he must renounce his family. Why do people say he’s no longer a family member? I don’t understand why the bonze can’t be both.”

  “It’s a deep question,” Chhuon said. “This is something we should ask Maha Nyanananda. I know only when a boy approaches manhood, he must renounce his family. It’s always been that way. In two years if he doesn’t follow the monastic life, he may rejoin them.”

  Samnang did not answer and Chhuon let the conversation stop. They descended out of the hills. The road surface became smoother though softer and Chhuon wove the truck back and forth to avoid potholes. The road leveled onto the broad flood-plain of the lower Srepok. The jungle thinned, the tunnel of vegetation giving way first to sparse forest, then to intermittent brush and grass, then to cultivated rice fields stretching as far as Samnang could see into the mist. Buildings and villages increased, though were still few and far between. Mayana curled tighter in against Chhuon, pulled her jacket tight and continued dozing.

  After a period Chhuon said, “In seven days it will be one hundred days since my father died. When we return home, I want you to see Maha Nyanananda. Arrange for me to meet with him. Bring him six cans of milk.”

  “Papa,” Samnang’s voice was again sharp, “why don’t the monks have food like other people? Why must someone—every day—bring them food?”

  “Holy men aren’t allowed to accumulate wealth or possessions,” Chhuon said. “Thus material goods can’t tarnish their spiritual work.”

  “But Father! Some monks don’t work at all.”

  “Eh?” Chhuon pursed his lips. “You’ve spent many days at the pagoda. Do the monks work?”

  “Only...I mean...well, Maha Nyanananda. He’s always busy. But even he doesn’t work like the farmers. Not even like you.”

  “They administer to our minds, our souls. Because you don’t see them stoop in the paddies or load trucks doesn’t mean their work’s not hard. I seldom load or unload anymore, does that mean I no longer work?”

  “But you do work with the farmers.”

  “Only as a teacher,” Chhuon said modestly. “Every year there is new rice and each variety must be separately tended. That’s my work: to teach the farmers about the new rice and to help them guard their fields. Monks teach people to guard their spirits. That’s their work. Each new rice has its own weakness, so we plant a little and watch it. Each new day presents challenges to our weaknesses. Those too must be watched.” Chhuon glanced at his son. If the boy was to follow him into business he should be taught everything Chhuon himself had learned through long hours of study. And if his spirituality was to grow, that too must be nurtured.

  Chhuon stopped the truck in the center of the road and rolled his window down. Beside him Yani opened her eyes, yawned, looked about and seeing that they were only halfway to their destination, closed her eyes again. “The new IR 8 is semidwarf and resists lodging,” Chhuon said. “That means the farmers will lose less of their crop to the wind. Look at this field. Cambodia grows eight hundred varieties of rice. Most of it, when the grain fills, and that during the windiest part of the monsoons, gets top-heavy. When it lies down like those plants,” Chhuon pointed to an entire paddy where thousands of rice stems made horizontal line patterns indicating the wind direction of the day before, “the plants die and the grain rots.”

  “And semidwarfs prevent that?” Samnang asked.

  “Yes,” Chhuon said. He rolled his window back up, leaving it open several inches to clear the fog from the windshield. “Not completely though. And there are other problems—more pests, more plant disease. Uncle Cheam says in a few years we’ll receive a new variety, IR 24, which is semidwarf and grows so fast that the grain will fill before the heaviest winds. The farmers will harvest in August, plant a second crop and harvest again in November. Instead of just the late harvest. Uncle Cheam is very optimistic, but I’ve read in French journals that the double cropping requires fertilizer.”

  “And we sell that,” Samnang said happily.

  “Yes. But most of our farmers can’t afford commercial fertilizers.”

  “Then what will happen to the crop?”

  “If it wears out the paddies the next crop will be poor, eh? There has to be a balance between what the land receives and what it gives. Just like a person’s spirit, eh? A balance. American scientists are experimenting with a rice that produces three crops a year. That’s fine in rich nations, but here...maybe only those who can afford fertilizers will be able to grow rice. Maybe the peasants will borrow money to buy chemicals. Maybe the price will come down. Maybe they won’t pay back what they borrow. Maybe they lose their land, eh?”

  The conversation lapsed. They drove in silence for several kilometers. Then Chhuon said, “We should talk about what happened yesterday.”

  Samnang looked at his lap. He glanced to see if Yani was still asleep. “Yes, Father,” he said. “I...”

  “I’m concerned about your schooling,” Chhuon said. “If you’re to be accepted into secondary school you must do well now. You cannot learn if you’re not in class.”

  “The boys teased me again, Father.”

  “You’re smart.” Chhuon looked toward his son. “Very quick. I wasn’t that way. You’ll go further with your education than me. Today everyone goes to school, eh? You’ll go to the university. But...how do you think your teachers look upo
n it?”

  Samnang’s voice was faint. “They called me ‘girlie.’ They say I should have been a girl.”

  “They know you were ill, eh?”

  “They still tease me.”

  “And you...,” Chhuon began. It was hard for him to see his Kdeb in pain.

  “I screamed at them. I wanted to hit them. Then I cried.” He was on the verge of tears.

  “Did you hit one?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s when they stole your pants?”

  “Yes.” Samnang’s head was down, his voice weak.

  “And you didn’t go back into class?”

  “No! Some of the girls already saw me because Khieng and Heng held me. They said they’d show the girls I really was a boy. If Kpa hadn’t stopped them, I would’ve jumped into the river and never come back. I’ll never forgive them.”

  The road smoothed as the small pickup neared Stung Treng. Two boys on Honda motorbikes whisked by in the opposite direction. Chhuon tensed. He watched the bikes in the mirror until they disappeared. Mayana moved restlessly. Without looking up she asked, “Are we there yet?”

  “Soon,” Chhuon answered. The clouds lifted, the mist became drizzle. Below the raised-dike roadway paddies glowed green. The road narrowed to one lane. Chhuon strained to see through the film-covered windshield.

  “Oh! Stop!” Samnang shouted. “There’s a...”

  “I see.” Chhuon’s voice was calm. He tapped the brakes. A squad of soldiers had set up a roadblock. Two soldiers were on the road. Six were visible on the north side, two more on the south. Roadblocks were becoming more and more frequent. Since January, with the incidents in Ratanakiri Province and the rioting, troops had increased their vigilance.

  Chhuon stopped the truck. He flashed the headlights, then advanced. Someone shouted. Several soldiers scampered from the north embankment to the south. “They’re crazy,” Chhuon muttered in the cab. “They see me every week.” Yani scrunched up tighter to her father. Samnang rolled his window down. “Roll it up,” Chhuon ordered harshly.

  “Father!” Samnang said, shocked at the tone.

  “Roll it up,” he repeated.

  Samnang raised the window. “I just wanted to see the soldiers.”

  Chhuon proceeded to a point twenty meters before the barrier. He stopped the truck, opened his door. “Hello,” he called out. “You know me.”

  “Is that you, Professor?” one of the soldiers shouted back.

  “Yes,” Chhuon called. “I’ve my children with me.”

  “Advance and be recognized,” a sergeant commanded.

  Of course, Chhuon thought. He pulled the door shut, shouted from the window, “Now, Brothers?”

  “One minute, Professor,” called the soldier who had first shouted. The soldier and the sergeant spoke briefly, too quietly for Chhuon to hear. Samnang’s heart raced. “Come forward....” the soldier called. “Slowly, Professor.”

  Chhuon put the transmission in first gear, slipped the clutch until the truck rolled, then feathered the clutch to keep the pace slow. Ten meters from the soldier and the sergeant he stopped the truck and turned the engine off. “Father...” Samnang’s voice shook. Chhuon glanced at him. Then, without a word, he got out of the truck and stood in the muddy road. Samnang looked down the embankment. The government soldiers looked motley. The sergeant before the truck wore an impeccably tailored new uniform.

  The soldier came forward, his weapon slung across his back. He put his hands together and bowed slightly to Chhuon. Chhuon returned the lei, a salutation common in Cambodia. “Cautious today, Brother, eh?”

  Quietly the soldier said, “I’m sorry, Professor. He’s a new sergeant. From Phnom Penh...doesn’t know country courtesy. He wants me to inspect the truck.”

  Samnang watched his father. The new sergeant stood a short distance before the truck, his carbine at the ready. Samnang bit his lower lip. “Do soldiers always stop Father?” Yani asked her brother.

  “Yes,” Samnang said. “I think. But they don’t make him get out. He pays them and they let him pass.”

  Chhuon led the soldier to the rear of the truck. “Are you carrying new rice, Professor?”

  “We’re going in for short-season rice,” Chhuon answered.

  “And what have you seen on the road?” The soldier rummaged through the hemp ropes.

  “Nothing,” Chhuon said. “A few boys on motorbikes.”

  “No bandits?”

  “I hope not.”

  “May I see your papers, please?”

  “They’re inside.”

  “First, lift the boards,” the soldier said.

  Chhuon lifted the boards from the truck bed and the soldier glanced under them. “You inspect the pig platform?” Chhuon asked, smiling.

  “Because of the explosions,” the soldier said. “The sergeant thinks explosives are brought in by merchants. Now we inspect all the trucks.”

  “What explosions?” Chhuon asked. He led the soldier back to the cab. The drizzle was coming harder.

  “Two this week. Since May, more and more. This week seven people are killed.”

  “That’s terrible,” Chhuon said. “I haven’t heard a word.”

  “Hello little brother. Hello little sister,” the soldier addressed the children. “Step out, please.” To Chhuon he said, “They wish to keep it secret.”

  Yani looked at her father, who nodded for her to come to him. Samnang followed. He stared at the sergeant. The sergeant turned away. The soldier bent forward, made a cursory search of the cab, then called to the sergeant, “This truck’s clear.”

  “Step back,” the sergeant commanded. Behind him, several of the other soldiers were rolling their eyes upward and making gestures to one another and to the first soldier, indicating the sergeant was insane. “You,” the sergeant said roughly to Chhuon, “open the hood.” Chhuon smiled and bowed to the sergeant. He unlatched the hood and opened it. “Step back,” the sergeant said. He pointed his carbine into the engine compartment. “Come here.” Chhuon approached, slipped the sergeant ten fifty-riel notes. “Now it’s clear,” the sergeant announced.

  The sergeant looked at Samnang, flashed a very large smile, and said, “You want to be a soldier like me?”

  Samnang looked at his father, then to the sergeant. “Captain,” Samnang said, “if I were a soldier could I carry a rifle like yours?”

  The sergeant laughed. “I’m not a captain. I’m just a sergeant.”

  “If I were a sergeant,” Samnang said, “I would have a uniform as beautiful as yours.”

  “Good,” the sergeant said. “Someday the professor’s son will be a soldier.”

  Now Chhuon laughed. “And I’m not a professor,” he said. “I sell seed. Sometimes a few animals.”

  “Mister Cahuom,” the soldier said to his sergeant, “brings new rice. He studies the grains and instructs the farmers. My brothers say he is a great teacher.”

  “Then, Teacher,” the sergeant said, “be on your way.”

  After the roadblock Chhuon barely spoke. He drove quickly past the last fields, the airport, the ferry landing, the river choked with barges and sampans. He did not wish to show his anger but it manifested itself in his driving, a gentle man who lovingly tended his vehicle speeding like a cowboy until a fish truck pulled from a side alley and caused him to jam the brakes.

  Chhuon broke his silence. “Samnang,” he said. A line of women carrying baskets of goods crossed the road before them.

  “Yes, Papa?”

  “If I forget, remind me to ask Uncle Cheam to arrange for the wedding rice.”

  “Yes, Papa. And the photograph of Prince Sihanouk?”

  “Yes. And the photograph.”

  Samnang smiled. As they passed through the riverfront market area he heard the high-pitched cackle from the stalls, studied the two- and three-story buildings rising on the left and, on the riverside, the fruit and vegetable stalls heaped with bananas, melons, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, tobacco and fi
sh. They passed a dance hall and several cafes. Samnang envisioned himself in the city as a student, perhaps dancing with a girl. Mayana felt overwhelmed, it was her first visit in more than a year, but Samnang was bursting to be part of the city. Stung Treng fascinated him. As the most northern Mekong River market in Cambodia, Stung Treng was the heart of the Northeast. The port handled all river traffic to 120 kilometers south where rapids at Kratie disrupted continuous river transport. Fifty kilometers from Laos, and at the edge of the Srepok Forest, the wharves of Stung Treng handled nearly all of the nation’s meat trade between Cambodia and its northern neighbor, all hardwood trade between mountainous Ratanakiri Province to the east and the rest of the nation. The city was more than a market, it was the regional center for culture, education, provincial government, finance and the Royal Army. And here people did not know Samnang, did not know the humiliations known to all in Phum Sath Din. Even at eleven years old he could sense that someday he would make a new start and he hoped it would be in this exciting city.

  “Papa?” Samnang said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to go to the secondary schools here. I could live with Uncle Cheam.”

  “Yes, I hope you will.”

  Chhuon slowly worked the truck through other trucks, cars, bicycles, motorbikes, carts and samlos (bicycle-drawn carriages). Above the stone levee merchants were preparing their stalls. Barefoot boys and girls in straw hats ran among parked farm carts. A stallkeeper bowed politely to a city policeman. Two young boys carrying transistor radios wandered aimlessly. Chhuon spotted them and thought, Everything is changing. We’re being Westernized. Samnang saw the boys, grinned inwardly and thought how grand it would be to wander amongst the wharves. From the last pier of the line Samnang could see the Mekong still to the west, a yellow water channel two kilometers wide, and the Srepok beside them, its red-brown mouth a kilometer wide, the waters mixing like fluid art.

  Chhuon parked before the last warehouse. He pulled his Buddha statuette from his shirt, kissed it seven times and gave thanks.

  “Good morning Uncle Cheam,” Samnang called. He used the formal Khmer appellation which indicated not simply “uncle” but “my father’s older brother.” Cheam, like Chhuon, was stocky and muscular, though as he’d aged, his barrel chest had slipped to his waist. Samnang liked him. He saw his uncle as more aggressive than his father, perhaps as less Buddhist, less prone to passivity, though not less honest or less concerned for others.