For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Met Sar stood before four large posters. Before the ceremony the new yotheas had stood below the portraits for a class photo—Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong overlooking them. “The moment the imperialist dogs and their lackeys are defeated and the country is ordered,” Met Sar announced, “we shall usher in an age of happiness. Everyone will be happy and will share in all the wealth of Kampuchea. Students, new comrades, come forward and receive your kramas. To you shall fall the responsibility of ridding our country of fascists, capitalists and reactionaries.” The class, now thirty-three, marched in an orderly line before Met Sar’s podium, received their scarfs, wrapped them about their necks and marched back. “You shall swear allegiance to the leadership of the Movement. You shall be disciples. You shall spread the message. ‘All comrades,’ ” Met Sar quoted Ho Chi Minh, speaking the words as if his own, “ ‘from the Central Committee down to the cell, must preserve the unity and oneness of mind in the Party.’ ”

  The ceremony was formal. Like Buddhist monks, like Christian monks, the new yotheas took vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and hard work. “Through these vows,” Met Sar addressed the class, “you shall find a great burden lifted from your back. In loyalty to the Movement you will find the passage to inner freedom.”

  Nang looked upon Met Sar with elation exploding in his chest, with a fervor that can only be expressed by the term “love.”

  “We believe in the Movement,” Met Sar said in his soft voice. The students repeated the line. Then in unison they continued:

  We believe in what the Movement has done for us, and for all people and all eternity.

  We believe the Movement is a gift to the People; we praise the Movement.

  The better we serve and honor the Movement, the better we serve and honor the People.

  We shall grow in the Movement as rice grows in fertile paddies.

  We shall search in the Movement and our souls shall have stable homes.

  We shall share in the Movement and our strength will be multiplied a hundredfold.

  The way of the Movement is not easy, but it is righteous and perfect.

  We are desire not contrary to duty.

  We are the sacrifice. We are the offering.

  The Movement is the People!

  We are the Movement!

  We are Kampuchea!

  “Met Nang.” Met Sar cornered the boy after the ceremony. “You and Met Eng have been chosen for special assignment. You shall go with Comrade Binh. He will brief you.”

  Nang looked at Met Sar. He did not speak though he wished to. Nor did he smile.

  Met Sar beheld Met Nang. He stepped to the boy and put his arms about his waist. “Learn everything you can,” Met Sar whispered. “Be cautious. You are going for international training to the camp where Bok Roh once trained. No one will recognize you. When you return, you’ll be a great warrior.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE INTERNATIONAL NEW YEAR had passed (the Cambodian New Year falls in mid-April) and the dry season was upon the land. Cahuom Chhuon broke from his heavy labor. His pants were soaked with sweat and stuck in his crotch. He had eaten less and less each day for six months and his once stocky body was light, not frail but wiry. He mopped his brow with a rag, a worn krama Sok had begun to use for cleaning. When he’d grabbed it he’d felt a certain pleasure, a certain acknowledgment in the denial to himself of a new krama. For a month he’d washed it daily in the river when he’d broken from his chores.

  Chhuon sat beneath a tree at the river’s edge. The afternoon sun bore through the branches to bake him but he did not move. He’d rinsed in the current, washed the rag, wrung it and sat. Slowly he placed the rag over his head. He sat erect, perfectly still, cleared his mind. His breath came shallow. He could feel his face, his jowls, sag. The weight of his thumbs felt like thousands of pounds, his wrists drooped, his hands turned inward on his thighs, the sun burned their backs.

  Peou must go to school. Sok must eat. His thoughts ran down his responsibilities as if he had a list. Cousin Sam needs help repairing his furrower. A cloud passed in front of the sun. Coolness enwrapped him. He shivered slightly but refused to respond. Seed must be distributed, his thoughts continued. I must write Vathana. The cloud cleared and again the sun burned into his hands, arms, body. And I must awaken my people, Chhuon thought. But how? Awaken them to the yuon threat. How? There must be revenge.

  Vathana was unhappy.

  Pech Chieu Teck was proper. His lovemaking was proper, his behavior and manners were impeccable. The luxuries he, his family, especially his mother, showered on the new bride were marvelous, yet in a month’s time Vathana felt as if she’d been tethered to an elephant and was about to be trampled. She told herself it was natural, told herself, “Mama called them post-wedding blues.” Aunt Voen, in her intimate manner, had kidded Vathana before the wedding, “with all his money, you’ll have nothing to do”—she’d giggled—“but the best thing.” For a month Vathana clung to the thought that they, she and Teck together, were very proper.

  Yet something was wrong. She hid her feelings from her husband, from everyone, blamed herself for feeling empty, felt guilty for having such thoughts. At the market she met a woman who lived in the same building two floors below and in a gush of desperation she whispered, “He’s like cold rice. He never talks to me. He doesn’t want me.”

  The woman mocked her. “It takes time to adjust,” she said. “Rice doesn’t grow in a day and cold rice is better than no rice, eh?” The guilt increased.

  By the second month Vathana was very unhappy. Indeed, she had nothing to do. This man was nothing like her father. He was proper but he seemed to have no interests, no desires, no passions, no drives. Or at least none he shared with her. People seemed to mean little to him. He was neither friendly nor aggressive. Business did not interest him; of his studies he seemed apathetic. Despite the new appliances, the closets full of clothes, the apartment with furnishings even Aunt Voen with a home in Phnom Penh would envy, Vathana felt nothing. No intimacy, no spirituality.

  She prayed. Her very first memories of her father were of him praying, teaching her to pray, teaching her to look inside herself even before she had reached the age of reason. Always he had taken her to the pagoda to pray, to ask the Holy One’s blessing, to help the spirit of a recently departed villager. Always they had talked of things which concerned the family or the village, talked of business, politics, religion, of dreams, health and the beauty of growing rice. In the late fifties, when Vathana. was eight or nine, before Chhuon had entered business with Uncle Cheam, she recalled him donating to the monks a portion of the little they had, not because he, Chhuon, wished others to know he donated, not even to earn merit and ensure his next life’s status, but because he believed, without trappings, that it was right. It was his way. Now it was hers.

  Teck was not like her father. After the ceremonies had ended, the guests had gone home, the food and presents had been repacked and stored, after they had settled in, alone, without family, without parents or siblings in a culture where solitude is almost unknown, Teck had called as many people as he could muster, his school friends, workers from the piers, peasants he knew in the city delivering farm goods, so they could witness him donating a few unwanted gifts and several hundred riels to the bonze. To Vathana, in their abundance, the gifts were meaningless, insulting.

  And Teck didn’t work. Mister Pech had given his son a river barge as a wedding present. The barges traveled the Mekong from My Tho, South Viet Nam, to Phnom Penh, under new license and the semicontrol of Sihanouk’s nationalization of trade. Since September 1968, trade and banking were being gradually returned to private control. Both nationalization and denationalization had worked to Pech Lim Song’s benefit. Under each change his profits increased. But whereas Teck’s father managed every detail of order, purchase, transport and delivery, Teck appointed a barge captain and collected money due. Day after day she watched him sitting, listening passively to the radio. W
hen she mentioned it, when she attempted to show affection, he shrank back, became defensive, then left for the dance halls to be with his idle pals from their student days. To Vathana the contrast between Teck’s cool, seemingly frivolous behavior and both her father’s and her father-in-law’s constant, diligent work was bewildering. Daily she compared the three men, daily her resentment grew. Even in her father’s withdrawal following the death of her siblings, she’d seen him labor harder and communicate more intimately than her new, wealthy husband.

  Then everything changed.

  “Madam, I must speak to your husband.” It was the barge captain. He had come to their apartment house shouting the name Pech Chieu Teck loudly dozens of times until he was directed to the fourth floor, then down the hallway. He banged on the door, once, and barged in. “It’s very urgent,” he said in French.

  “He’s not here,” Vathana responded, also in French.

  “He must be!” The captain threw his arms in the air, looked up and down, into the doorways to the other rooms, arms flailing as if he could turn over the entire room and check under each object and thus produce the man he desired to see.

  “He’s not here,” Vathana repeated. “He’s...” She hesitated. “...dancing.”

  “Dancing? Dancing!” The captain exploded. He smacked a fist into an open palm. “The river burns and he’s dancing!?”

  “Please.” Vathana’s hands swayed gracefully toward a chair. “I can help. Tea? Have you had rice today?”

  The captain sat momentarily, then sprang up and paced as Vathana brought out rice, tea, a plate of pickled fish. “We must arm the crew,” the captain said, his arms flying in exasperation.

  “Now,” Vathana said calmly, “you will tell me all.”

  “The water’s low this time of year,” the captain said as if explaining to a child. “The river’s not so wide. They attack us more easily.”

  “Who?”

  “Who? Who knows? Bandits!” he shouted. “This morning, not twenty-five kilometers from here they rose up out of the swamps west of the channel. You know Phum Sambour? Just below. Where the river’s very narrow. They wounded two crewmen. Good men.”

  “I beg you”—Vathana showed deep concern—“tell me how you run the barge.”

  “Madam, come with me. I’ll show you.”

  For an hour the captain explained the incidents on the river as he and Vathana walked the deck, inspected the sandbagged wheelhouse, the hold and the damage caused by the rocket-propelled grenade which had wounded the men. For two hours he explained the operations of the barge, and of the tugs which were required at the ports. He showed her channel charts and explained why they had to hug one shore here, the other there. Then he resuggested armament.

  “And the army?” Vathana asked.

  “Useless.” The riverman shook his head. “Across the border the ARVN river patrols come. Here, we radio the Royals and we must negotiate payment before they come. Madam,” he said, “we must arm.”

  Vathana turned away, looked down the river. For the first time she felt she had some understanding of the business her husband failed to direct, felt she might have a reason to be in Neak Luong. Could she direct the business? She turned back, fixed the captain with her stare. Her stomach tightened. She had no breath to speak. Yes, she thought, I can. I can. “Do what you must”—she gasped, she gulped air, blurted: “to arm the men.”

  The captain locked his eyes on her. His stare was savage, challenging. Vathana stared back. “I want to know everything that concerns this vessel,” she said firmly. “Where you go, when, the crew, exactly what you buy, what you fire off.” She inhaled deeply. With her assertion came an unexpected calm. “Fight only to defend yourselves,” she said. “We’re a merchant company, not an army.”

  Though Nang and Eng traveled with fellow Communists, they were outsiders. Their training, their age, their feeling of racial superiority alienated them. The Viet Namese were five to forty years older. Nang and Eng were but twelve. For Nang there was no trust, no solidarity with yuons. At times he spied Mountaineers, some soldiers but mostly coolies. With them he felt a kinship yet he did not approach. Amongst them he looked for the giant.

  Nang, Eng, and Binh became a cell. Comrade Binh was Viet Namese, a lame, combatant of the People’s Army of Viet Nam (PAVN). He was their guide, their authorization to be on the trail. He made no attempt to be their friend. Nang was not sure where Binh was leading them; he had been told only that it was toward a camp at which Bok Roh trained others, a camp of international training. For thirty-four days they walked north, rode north, at times during the day, mostly at night. Each day Nang felt the removal from Kampuchea more deeply; each night he questioned this disruption of his mission.

  The land changed drastically. For a time they traveled in steep mountains, for a time over relatively flat plateau. At one point the mountain paths were so steep that in a week they covered no more than thirty kilometers. It became cold, colder than Nang had ever known. The dry season was under way in Cambodia but here rains continued. Binh called them mountain rains. Most of the traffic they saw was heading south. To Nang, the vision of thousands of soldiers, with thousands of bicycles and thousands of heavy trucks, more vehicles than he’d seen in his entire life, was intimidating. Gone was the security of Cambodia. Every night planes bombed or strafed distant sections of the trail; uncanny, Nang heard porters say, in their accuracy. Each night the planes destroyed huge amounts of materiel and many vehicles. Some soldiers were killed, some wounded, but personnel trails were separate from truck routes and only truck routes were bombed.

  To have that power, Nang thought. Yet it’s like trying to stop the flow of a river by tossing boulders into the current. They alter the course, even back the stream into pools, but eventually the water leaks through and flows on. Still, he thought, still...

  Each night, antecedent to bombing, flares popped and lit the roadway. Invariably, second flares and second bombing waves followed. Nang came to enjoy the noise on the parallel trails. When the flares came he would sit, his arms squeezed tightly to his sides, his fists at his lowered chin, and he would wonder about the power. Then one night, in the last flat light before the second wave of explosions, Nang witnessed the severity of damage inflicted by bomb shrapnel on yuon torsos. The sight struck him. All that night he thought about the power, the ability to kill from such a great distance.

  By the twenty-third day they had moved north of the bombing grids. There they rendezvoused with other pairs of Khmer boys, each escorted by a PAVN soldier. For five days they marched, their column ever increasing. Then, with hundreds of others, they were trucked out of the mountains, into beautiful tropical hills, and deposited at an immense training camp where armored vehicles, tanks, cannons and AA guns were in abundance.

  China, Nang thought. China!

  “Someone is bombing,” Vathana said in French. They spoke only French in the apartment. “Also, I must tell you...”

  “To you, always there is a crisis,” Teck retorted. He looked at his wife with disgust, the same look his father gave his mother when they argued.

  “Eh...” Her primary thought had been of personal news yet his words made her defensive. “Why can’t it be true?” she said. “Does the captain lie?”

  “Did he see them bomb?” Teck’s voice was harsh. Ever since the betrothal he had been seething inside—angry with his father for attaching him to this peasant girl, angry with his culture for demanding obedience, compliance to the wishes of the elders, angry with himself for not being able to say he wanted more, wanted to go to Paris, to find an educated woman, to lead his own life as he pictured a French son would. “No!” he shouted. “Did any of the crew see bombings? No! I tell you if the South Viet Namese bombed as you say, Samdech Sihanouk would have been on the radio for five hours.”

  “Maybe he refuses to believe it. It could be...”

  “It could be nothing.” Teck stood, tense. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone,” he yelled at her.
“We were paid. We had a good captain. You order guns for them. You tell them when and where to load, to unload?! You and that damn monk. What does he know?”

  “They’ve no reason to report untruths,” Vathana said bitterly. “No reason.” She reached to her chest, pulled out the statuette of Buddha carved from her grandfather’s tooth that her father had given her the last day of the wedding ceremony. “The crew brought six children and their mother upriver. She said she was there. She said the ground trembled and many bombs tore the jungle where the Viet Namese had their camp. You could have talked to them. No, you have to dance.”

  “Stay out of this business. Why can’t you believe like your father?”

  “My father!?” Vathana caressed the statuette.

  “My father says your father told him, ‘War is for politicians. Not for us.’ I believe that.”

  Vathana stared at her husband. He had never spoken so harshly to her, had never shown such emotion. She wanted him to talk but now she wanted to win the argument. “Two crewmen refuse to cross the border, refuse to even travel near the border. What politician will convince them to go?”

  “You want to run the company?” Teck snapped the words. He spun, walked toward the door. Spun, strode back. “Let me do it. To hell with those two. Get a new crew. I’m going out.”

  “Out?” Vathana shook her head. “How can you do it? You’re always out. We’ve reports of Khmer Rouge attacking villages above Kratie. Reports of bombings. Maybe South Viet Namese attack North Viet Namese on Cambodian soil. Samdech Euv’s wife, she and her brother...your father says they collaborate in rice smuggling to the VC and NVA. Don’t you listen to your father?”