“...my people have lost everything...”—the speakers blasted the recorded message to the villagers—“...peace, dignity, independence, territorial integrity...”
Chhuon’s mind stopped. On the moment of clarity a thick haze descended engulfing past, present and future.
“...my people are immersed in the worst suffering, the worst misfortunes and the worst catastrophe in their history...”
Chhuon’s mind bolted, searching the fog for the patch of blue; then, as in an inner chess game, he juxtaposed a hundred pieces in imagined scenarios, played out each move in seconds, then brooded. There was no escape. He looked for Kpa but the boy was gone. He thought of the small angel house before his home which had fallen into disrepair and thought of the steps needed to repair it.
“...I can only hope for total victory of the revolution...for total defeat of the reactionary and pro-imperialist...”
“Uncle.” Hang Tung joined Chhuon on the pagoda steps.
“...the American imperialists will be beaten by the Viet Namese and our Khmer People’s Liberation Army...”
“I’m very happy to see that you are already here.”
“I’m here,” Chhuon answered flatly.
“You left very early this morning.”
“The village is large,” Chhuon said. “There are many people now. The committee requires their presence, eh?”
“...in my name...the establishment of the government-in-exile...the National United Front of Kampuchea...”
“Then you’ve notified everyone?” Hang Tung asked.
“I have sent word for all to be notified,” Chhuon answered.
Hang Tung’s lips parted into a thin smile. He watched Chhuon as Chhuon watched the crowd grow. He will obey, Hang thought. He is Khmer, he is Buddhist. Khmer Buddhists obey authority.
“...in my name...”—the Prince’s voice boomed from the speakers—“...I call on all those of my children, compatriots, military and civilian, who can no longer endure the unjust oppression, join the Liberation Army...raise up and oust the pretender regime, the treacherous Lon Nol, his lackey Sirik Matak and their masters, the American imperialists...rise up before the Lon Nol clique massacres all...join the maquis...engage in guerrilla warfare in the jungles against our enemies...the People’s Army...patriotic volunteers will provide you with rifles and ammunition. You will be provided proper military training...”
“It is our destiny, eh, Uncle?” Tung whispered to Chhuon.
“Is it?” Chhuon hid a sneer. He offered a slight smile. My body, he thought, you can imprison my body.
“Yes.” Tung smiled. “Now we are a village under Prince Sihanouk, loyal to the Prince, protected by our own army.”
“This is very good,” Chhuon said, hiding his sarcasm. He now knew that to disagree would be dangerous.
“It is up to us to shape the village, to unite it, to rid it of tyrants.” Hang Tung’s voice was smooth. “When the country is liberated all Khmers will unite.”
Chhuon smiled, his face an actor’s mask.
For nine days North Viet Namese and Khmer Viet Minh armed propaganda teams played tapes of Sihanouk’s speeches and pleas in Phum Sath Din and in Vietnamese-controlled villages and cities from Bokor to Battambang, from Preah Vihear to Prey Veng. Sihanouk broadcast his appeals via Radio Peking, Radio Hanoi, Viet Cong Liberation Radio, and Khmer Viet Minh channels urging the Khmer people to join the revolution against the republican government. The pleas of Samdech Euv, Prince Father, ignited in the rural and urban poor uncontrollable fires. These speeches were the primary stimulus for the growth of the maquis throughout the nation. Sihanouk’s words gave the Communists a cloak of respectability which they had never achieved through terrorism, conscription, or proselytizing. In Phum Sath Din, Khieng and Heng were the first of many to join up. They, like most of the nearly seventy thousand volunteers who joined the rebels over the next year, thought they were joining a new faction, the Khmer Rumdoah. They saw themselves as Royalist, not Communist.
When the world outside seems to be disintegrating a man likes to establish a solid calm within his own family. So it was that Pech Lim Song invited his second son and son’s wife to dinner on the evening of 27 March, invited them on a dual pretext: first to show them his new home and second to discuss the new national situation and its demand for new business policies. Yet the true reason was he sought reconciliation with Teck.
“The house is marvelous, Mother.” Teck twirled, waving an arm at the vaulted ceiling, the chandeliers, the rosewood balustrades guarding the second-floor balconies. He tapped his feet on the tiled floor. “Absolutely marvelous, Father,” he said in French. “It must have cost a fortune.”
The new home was a modest villa set on a forested rise (Madame Pech called it a hill) on Highway 15 a kilometer north of Neak Luong. In the ballroom the chatter was light, happy. A servant offered hors d’oeuvres, a band played traditional music on a sailing vessel-shaped bamboo xylophone to which even Sophan swayed gaily, clutching Mister Pech’s infant grandson as if the baby were a dance partner. Vathana stood alone in the darkened dining room. Through the French doors she could see the dim lights of the city reflected on the rumpled bottom of the night overcast. To the east over Boeng (Lake) Khsach Sa, the surrounding swamps and paddies, and the small but growing refugee shanty town, the night was an impenetrable amorphous black wall.
“Cost is not your concern,” Madame Pech retorted gaily. “Of course with the riel’s devaluation, why, it’s forty percent less now than when your father began...”
Vathana stepped to the dining room door, grabbed the door handle for balance, squeezed her eyes closed then opened them and stared into the night. This talk, this opulence, she thought, it’s not Khmer, it’s...but before she could complete the thought Pech Lim Song’s voice carried throughout the villa. “Let’s dine,” he said cheerily.
Vathana turned toward the ballroom. Two servants were leading the family toward her. She reached up, massaged her forehead briefly, then, smiling, stepped toward her father-in-law as the lights opened refracting and sparkling from crystal stemware and chandelier. “Outside,” she said pleasantly, “the night is as dark as it was in Phum Sath Din, and in here, it’s as lovely as the sun on the river.”
“Did you see the whole house?” Teck asked, not recalling her presence during his mother’s tour.
“Every corner.” Vathana smiled.
“Vin, Madame?” A servant offered her a filled glass from a tray.
“Oui. Merci.”
Teck raised his glass. “To your good fortune and the good fortune of your home, Father,” he offered.
“To the good health of our family,” Mister Pech rejoined.
Conversation through the six-course continental meal was stilted, limited to details of house construction and banal chatter about the infant, Samnang. For an hour Vathana sat, uneasy, sure the topic would fall to politics. When it did she felt relieved.
“I hope he doesn’t return,” Teck said almost whimsically.
“I’m surprised you feel that way,” Mister Pech said.
“You were right, Father. Under Prince Sihanouk the country was weak.”
“It was a feudal kingdom,” Mister Pech said sadly. “Warlords, barons, each governor with his own fiefdom. The coup has brought a new era, an era of justice which will cleanse the system of feudal corruption. And yet...I...”
“You, Father?!” Teck smiled sympathetically.
“I’ll miss him. I won’t miss the corruption.” Pech Lim Song listed some of the more glaring mistakes of Norodom Sihanouk. After each item he said, “And still he was the monarch,” or “Yet still there was no amendment limiting his powers.”
Teck responded with conciliatory interjections of “He was a bore,” or “How I hated his films,” or “Those endless radio speeches.” Then Teck smirked, taunted his father, “But Father, you paid bonjour to everyone. It’s the traders who caused the bribes.”
Mister Pech glared at his second so
n, who now lowered his eyes, seemingly intent on the food. Madame Pech watched her husband. Vathana’s chest tightened. She was about to say business was impossible without bonjour when Sophan, who had been in the kitchen with the servants, approached and whispered to her. Vathana smiled. “Oh yes,” she said to Sophan. “Yes.” “It will take a few minutes, Angel.” Sophan bowed and left.
“Perhaps,” Mister Pech said when Sophan was gone, “you’re right. I wish it hadn’t happened as it has. I wish he weren’t humiliating himself and disgracing all Khmers with his Communist babble. La sale guerre, eh?”
Teck did not respond. Mister Pech tried to control his irritation but the absence of reaction made him seethe. “He was like a father,” Pech Lim Song said, “but a father who, though he sees to their needs, keeps his children locked in separate rooms so they neither mature nor unite. Now that he’s gone the feudal system will pass. The children will be free.”
“Free?” Teck blurted. “To mature? Are they prepared for that?” He smiled to soften his words. “Is the army ready for Lon Nol’s ‘holy war’? Are they ready to drive out the ‘evil ones’? If the new father is also a child, can the children become adults? Are you ready for it, Father?”
“I’m prepared to do what must be done,” Mister Pech said flatly.
Lightly Teck slapped the table. “Father! The country still has a feudal regime.”
“No,” Mister Pech said firmly. “It has passed. The National Assembly’s given only emergency powers to the prime min...”
“Sisowath Sirik Matak and Lon Nol!” Teck said the names as if they were an accusation.
“Yes,” Mister Pech said. “Your mother’s a Sisowath. This is good, eh?” Mister Pech cited the attributes of each man, then named other statesmen and listed their good deeds.
Teck countered each. “They instigated the coup...A bumbler....He’s of the old order....He’s as corrupt as Samdech Euv.”
“Bumbling! Corrupt! Do you think anyone can come in”—he clapped his hands—“like that! Take over like that! Without difficulties! Certainly, they scramble for support. I’ve been assured Lon Nol has even sent the Prince a private memo requesting his return, asking him to assist in expelling the Viet Namese.”
“Father”—Teck shook his head—“not one of those men has the intelligence, honesty or ability you have. If you ran the country, maybe there would be a chance for real reform. But you don’t. You stop short of involving yourself. We’ve only traded one king for another, and this one, he’s suspended the Bill of Rights. Now they arrest whomever they please.”
“At least he’s not aiding the Communists. He’s not leading the Viet Namese takeover.”
Vathana put her hand over her husband’s. She had been silent during much of the discussion. Now, with the security of belief in her opinion, she said emphatically, “Under Prince Sihanouk our shelter was ignored by the government. In nine days of Lon Nol we have been requested to file forms for assistance. All month new refugees have come to us. They’ve been bombed and attacked by Viet Namese.”
“They’re bombed by Americans.” Teck jerked his hand from under his wife’s, embarrassing her.
“The rivermen feel safer, too,” Vathana said. “If they call for help, someone responds.”
“As Lon Nol says,” Pech Lim Song said, bitterness creeping into his voice; “Sihanouk is a demon sent by the king of hell to destroy Buddhism.”
“Lon Nol is an American agent.” Teck did not disguise his anger.
“Well.” Madame Pech laughed. She tapped her long finger nails nervously on the table. “All we can really do is sit and wait to see what the Americans do, eh? If they decided to, eh? they could line up shoulder to shoulder on the western border and march east consuming everything like locusts. Or march east to west? Which is it? They do surround us, don’t they, mon cher? Thailand and Viet Nam are their satellites just, as the Communists claim. Oh dear!” Madame Pech turned to her daughter-in-law. “I must admit though, I would love to meet some Americans. What about you, Vathana? I understand in Saigon they throw the most extravagant parties.”
Softly Teck said, “Mother!”
“I mean with you, of course, dear. Just think of their wealth. Oh”—Madame Pech switched from French to English, which neither her husband, the young couple nor the servants understood—“to be as rich as an American!”
“You’ll do well with an American presence,” Teck said, ignoring his mother’s foreign phrases. “They always bring lots of money.”
“Then you also shall do well, husband,” Vathana said. Her face was calm but inside she was tense, angry—deeply angry still at this man for his heroin slumber the day she couldn’t wake him, the day she had nearly bled to death. “We’re in the same business as your father.”
“Talk of war and politics...it’s such a bore.” Madame Pech stopped the conversation. “Let’s talk, instead, of wine.”
“What is it, Mother?”
Aside to Vathana Mister Pech said, “There’s South Viet Namese and American escorts on the Mekong. And there’s talk of additional American assistance.”
“What!?” Teck yelped. Both Vathana and Mister Pech looked at him, alarmed. “American...”—he clapped his hands for emphasis exactly as his father had. From his throat burst a nervous titter—”...Lon Nol’s invited them, eh?”
“Better the Americans than the yuons,” Mister Pech said.
“It was the CIA behind the coup,” Teck snapped. “Better them!?”
“It wasn’t the Americans,” Mister Pech snapped back. “They supported the Prince. He’d moved much closer to them. This departure upsets the balance they established along the border.”
“That’s why it took them only hours to announce their backing for Lon Nol.”
“More likely the Soviets and their Hanoi clients were behind it. That’s who’s benefiting.”
“That’s who’s bene...!? The national army is seizing all Viet-owned property.” Teck’s voice cracked. “That’s who’s benefiting.”
“Still, better we align ourselves with America than with Communists.”
“Better neither,” Teck said bitterly. “Agh, Viets are only Asian Americans. They’re both expansionists. Both believe their culture’s imposition on anyone is a gift. Both are organizers, and followers of organizers! Agh!” Teck shook his fists before him like a little boy in a tantrum. “Why should I care if Americans or Viet Namese come!? Why? I should care only to kill both, to free myself and our land.”
“Humph!” Mister Pech scoffed. “How many yuons, or Americans, can you and that Louis kill from the cafes? Someday”—Pech Lim Song turned to Vathana—“he will grow up. Someday he will be like me.”
At that moment Sophan reappeared with the infant, freshly bathed and swaddled for warmth. Talk ceased. The aroma of Tiger Balm salve wafted through the room. The infant cooed, gurgled. Vathana smiled. Mister Pech’s eyes shined. “Watch,” Sophan said proudly. She loosened the blanket, nudged an arm out and placed a bamboo rattle in Samnang’s hand. The baby clumsily clutched it in a stiff hand then fiercely whipped it up and down and laughed an infant’s high-pitched snorting laugh.
As the grandfather clapped, his first servant came from the hallway. “Sir.” The old man bowed. “There’s important news on the radio. Poland has closed its embassy and in Kompong Cham two demonstrators have been shot.”
“Bring it here.”
“Wouldn’t it be wise,” Madame Pech addressed the table as the butler went for the radio, “not to take sides? If the Royalists return, we’ll live as before. If Lon Nol succeeds, well, so much the better. And if the Communists are victorious, you, my dear husband, should think of becoming commissar of transportation.” Madame Pech paused. She winked at her son, returned to her husband. “You do have contact with the Communists, don’t you, dear?”
Mister Pech did not answer. Vathana’s smile at Samnang’s antics drooped. Teck chuckled. “The Viet Namese call it attentisme. Fence sitting. Ha! I should have know
n.”
“It may be prudent”—Madame Pech’s voice was a sweet whisper—“to provide a little support to all sides, eh?”
“Here, sir,” the butler said, placing the Japanese transistor radio before the head of the house and adjusting the dial.
“...such a demonstration was, we are certain, the work of the Viet Cong who are masters of this kind of thing...”
“Who’s speaking?”
“A government spokesman, sir,” the servant replied.
“...incited by the Viet Cong, the demonstrators sacked the courthouse, the provincial offices. Several trucks were stolen. Some of the demonstrators approached to within three kilometers of Phnom Penh...”
“Three kilometers of the capital!?”
“I didn’t hear that before, sir. Only that a six o’clock curfew is now in force and that the army intercepted the demonstration.”
“...all patriots, especially the people of Kompong Cham, keep cool heads and remain calm...the army has been instructed to crush any further demonstrations...”
“Is that all?” Mister Pech asked as program music followed the announcement.
“Isn’t that enough?” Teck said lowly.
“The government has announced the mobilization of all former servicemen,” the servant answered. “Veterans are to report for duty. Sir, you’re a former serviceman, aren’t you?”
“I’m too old. What else did they say?”
“They said thirty-six hundred Communist soldiers are advancing on Phnom Penh. That they incited the riot. National assemblyman Trinh Hoan reported three Viet Cong columns of a thousand each have advanced to within fifty kilometers of the capital. All from the Northeast, sir. Plus six hundred from the Southeast. And sir, there is other news on VC Liberation Radio.”
Mister Pech carefully rotated the tuner until the dial lined up with a mark he’d made earlier.
“...we denounce the South Viet Namese attack into Kandal Province, which has killed fifty-three innocent people, as a heinous crime of war against the Khmer people...”
For the Sake of All Living Things Page 30