The morning sky was gray as Vathana walked from the pagoda. Early every morning since she’d discovered she was again pregnant she had gone to the city’s main temple to pray for strength and the health of her baby. In her prayers she attempted to be selfless, feeling she could not ask for more than what the refugees in the swamp-camp received. Yet, for the developing new life, she asked for more, much more. A Westerner might say Vathana was under the care of Doctor Sarin Sam Ol. In the old style, he monitored her pregnancy, observed her habits. There were no sonograms in Neak Luong. If there had been, Vathana would not have been inclined to allow the test. Repeatedly she refused Madame Pech’s persistent offers to have her see a Western specialist in Phnom Penh.
As Vathana walked from the pagoda through the market the overcast broke up and the sun shot through the gaps. For two days she hadn’t felt the baby move. Now she feared it was dead. She fought the urge to see Doctor Sarin. It is too early, she thought. He’s busy. Perhaps, she told herself, the baby only sleeps. Perhaps it is only that I’ve been preoccupied and haven’t noticed.
The market stalls were full of goods—sweets, housewares, dried and fresh fish, chickens, pigs, vegetables. There were new items—military items—ponchos and thin camouflaged nylon quilts, canteens, a jeep radiator and truck mirrors, wiring harnesses, a few artillery shell casings, uniform shirts, American boots, a dozen rucksacks.
At her apartment Vathana lay down. She lay on the floor, her feet on a pillow. “Angel?” Sophan knelt beside her. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Vathana’s answer was calm. “I just wish to have my feet up a moment.” Why she did not tell Sophan her fear she didn’t know. Immediately she wished she had.
“Angel, guess what?” Sophan’s face shone.
“What?” Vathana said. She hid the trembling of her lower jaw.
“Samnang—this morning—he crawled. A meter. At least a meter. He’s asleep but you’ll...”
Vathana barely smiled, barely heard. She placed a hand on her abdomen, felt its tight, hard bulge. Standing in her long full black skirt and loose white blouse she didn’t look pregnant, not nearly six months, but lying on her back with the cloth falling to her sides, she looked very far along. She closed her eyes. Sophan padded softly to the kitchenette. Move baby, Vathana thought. Please. Just a little wiggle. The thought of the baby wiggling brought a warmth to her heart but immediately the smile was overridden by fear.
Vathana tried to supplant fear with other thoughts. There’s much to do today. The week’s food distribution plan for the camp must be recorded, copied and issued. There are still ten thousand refugees. Many have moved to Phnom Penh, yet more arrive. Vaguely she thought of the situation along the Mekong. The ARVN had taken over every riverside village in order to guarantee the security of the country’s aorta. Inhabitants had been forced to retreat away from the river’s edge, many into hamlets which the Communists controlled. In the Southeast the NVA and Viet Cong had instituted a deliberate program of expelling civilians and forcing them into national government areas—thus increasing the refugee burden while freeing themselves from responsibility for “nonproductive elements.” American bombings, too, were worse than in the spring. How, Vathana thought, do they say it?—because few hamlet relocations have been plotted for the pilots!
A flutter. Vathana’s eyes brightened. She rose, went to the desk. Then she thought perhaps she had willed the flutter and the fear crept back. To simplify the food distribution she had organized the camp into ten-family units, each unit having one appointed leader responsible for the rice, salt and oil ration. After an hour, Vathana closed the camp books and lifted the shipping ledgers. Her barge, Teck’s barge, had been “leased” by the government and was no longer under their control, yet she continued to maintain accurate logs for maintenance, as Mister Pech had taught her, and semiaccurate lading manifests of what and how much was shipped, where it was shipped, what the captain and crew reported about each trip. No longer were foodstuffs exported. Another hour passed. Vathana moved on to new business. At the camp this day there would be a foreign visitor, a Swedish doctor, who was coming to revamp the sanitation system.
Suddenly there were two knocks, two raps, almost simultaneously, one at the door, one from the inside of her womb. Vathana sat back, her entire face lit with joy and relief. Inside her the fetus rolled. “What are you doing in there?” she whispered. “Are you building a house?”
“Hello.” Vathana heard Sophan’s greeting. She could tell by the wet-nurse’s voice that the visitor was a stranger.
“Scuse me, ma’am,” an immense Caucasian said in English. Vathana went to the door. Sophan stepped back. “Chow bah,” the American said in bastardized Viet Namese. “Ah, shit!” The soldier rolled his head, neck and shoulders in what would have been, from a Khmer, a rude display of one’s body out of control. “Ah cain’t tahk ta these here little folk.” Vathana giggled. The huge American seemed more like a circus bear than a human. “La-ten-ent!” The soldier turned, called down the corridor. “Scuse me, ma’am,” the soldier said, shaking a hand with thumb pointing, “but he’ll be here in a minute.” To himself the soldier said, “God a’mighty, why’s that J. L. go tell me ta knock if he weren’t goina be here? Him en that dragon lady aide from the Foreign Ministry.”
“Monsieur”—Vathana raised her hands in a graceful fei—“parlez-vous français ?”
“Augh, shit,” the soldier mumbled. He glanced furtively down the corridor. “There they go again with them hands.” Loudly he yelled, “La-ten-ent! There’s som-bodday home.”
From the hall came the voice of Madame Pech. “Dear,” she called in French. “Vathana, dear.” As she entered the room she smiled, a broad fake smile, not the ubiquitous smile of old Cambodia, which was a show of friendship and goodwill, but the fake smile of a Parisian debutante imagining herself before cameras. “Well, look at you,” she said quickly. “You look lovely. Are you taking care of our new grandchild?” Then Madame Pech turned to Sophan. She nodded, a gesture which was almost a nonacknowledgment, then back to Vathana. “How is Samnang?”
“Mother,” Vathana said pleasantly in Khmer, “who are these men?”
“This is Sergeant Huntley of the Military Equipment Delivery Team.” Madame Pech indicated the large man who’d knocked on the door. “And this”—indicating the man emerging from behind the sergeant—“is Lieutenant Sullivan. You know, like the American boxer.” Madame Pech raised her two tiny fists and circled them about like an old-time pugilist. “Lieutenant John L. Sullivan.”
“No relation,” the American officer said sheepishly.
To the officer Madame Pech said in English, “This daughter mine. She Angel Neak Luong.”
Vathana bowed again. The second American was smaller than the first, not much larger than a Khmer man. His hair was coppery and his face was covered with a thousand freckles. In simple Western civilian dress he did not appear to be a soldier. “Pardonez-moi.” Sullivan bowed, returning Vathana’s greeting with a clumsy lei. “Please excuse my friend and me,” he said in perfect French. “We’re sorry but we’ve not yet learned Khmer.”
Vathana’s eyes twinkled. In her womb the fetus flipped as if it were somersaulting. “French is fine,” Vathana said. She backed into the apartment, leading the visitors into the living room. “May I help you? You’re American?”
“Oui,” Sullivan said softly.
“How da ya like this!” Huntley blurted. “It’s a dang real live livin room. With a TV!”
“Ron!” Sullivan looked up at the big sergeant and squeezed the word out between his teeth.
“Oh, ah, sorry, J. L.”
“Mrs. Pech.” Sullivan turned his attention to Vathana. “I need to find the man in charge of the refugee center. Your mother...”
“Oh,” Madame Pech interrupted. She spoke quickly in Khmer. “Vathana, straighten this young man out. I’ve just come to tell you to have Teck’s clothes packed. I’ll send a servant for them. He’s going to remain in Phnom Penh where he can
assist the war effort most effectively.” At that Madame Pech bid her daughter-in-law and the Americans adieu.
Sullivan began again. “Mrs. Pech...,” he said tentatively.
Vathana smiled. “Cahuom Vathana,” she said. “In Cambodia a wife does not take her husband’s name.”
“Chum Vatana,” he repeated, trying, to catch all the syllables and the inflection. “You are the woman they call ‘the Angel’?”
“Only Sophan does that.” Vathana opened her hand toward the stout older woman. Sullivan was lost for words. Vathana’s movement was at once simple, elegant and graceful.
“J. L.,” Sergeant Huntley whispered, “look at this here.” He had flipped open the photo album of Vathana’s wedding. “Look at this dude in the gold loincloth. Wow!”
Sullivan did not answer Huntley. He had not taken his eyes from Vathana’s face. Her skin was perfectly clear, smooth, the loveliest bronze he’d ever seen. Her lips were full. Ripe, he thought. But most of all he noticed her eyes. They twinkled. They sparkled. They held an irrepressible glow so steeped in love not even the war could tarnish the luster.
“Your mother—” Sullivan began after a pause.
“Madame Pech?” Vathana said. She did not look into Sullivan’s face but slightly down and to the side. “Madame Pech is my mother-in-law. Her son was my husband.”
“Oh,” Sullivan said, taking the “was” to mean her husband had been killed. “I’m sorry.”
Vathana realized immediately the American’s misunderstanding but she did not correct it. She found she was enjoying speaking French to this man, found she was enjoying his exotic appearance, found herself liking his polite manner of standing serenely. What she did not like was how she felt she looked to him, her face and lips puffed in pregnancy, her walk a waddle of wide hips.
“You are looking...”
“Oh! Yes. For the man in charge of the camp.”
“I’m the man in charge,” Vathana said. She raised her shoulders and giggled slightly.
Sullivan giggled too in what appeared to Ron Huntley as the weirdest behavior he’d yet seen from the officer, though he, Huntley, did not understand the language being spoken.
For an hour Vathana and Sullivan talked, at first very politely in the living room then rapidly over papers and charts, some of which had been brought by the officer and others of which Vathana had produced from her files. As they talked Sullivan struggled with himself, struggled to keep his eyes on the charts, yet he watched her at the periphery of his vision. He at once felt giddy and intimidated. When she placed her hand on a page and pointed to a figure, he could not keep his eyes off her hand, off the long slender fingers. He forced himself to be more businesslike than he normally would have been. Finally they finished.
“Damn it,” Sullivan whispered to Huntley who was sitting on the sofa, sipping tea and watching Khmer TV, mesmerized by the black-and-white tube though he understood not a word spoken.
“What’s up?” Huntley rose slowly, still watching the TV as if he didn’t want to miss an important part of a dramatic plot.
“For one, they only received a hundred sheets,” Sullivan said. He turned and bowed to Sophan and Vathana.
“That cor-roo-gate-tad plastic shit?” Huntley Said when they were back in the corridor.
“Yup. We sent a thousand. The camp received a hundred. Same with everything. The shipping orders match but somebody’s changed the numbers.”
“Think she sold it?”
“No. No way.”
“Why not? Cause she’s knocked up?”
“Huh?”
“Wouldn’t a minded a piece a that myself a few months back. What about you? I see you lookin’ at them swelled tits.”
“Fuck you!”
“Hey, J. L., I was just askin’.”
“Come on. Mrs. Cahuom said we can go to the camp.”
Within moments “after the Americans left the apartment building, there was a harsh series of raps on the door. Sophan opened it. A young, thickset Khmer pushed his way in, slammed the door. Both women startled. From the bedroom the infant Samnang screamed.
“Cahuom Vathana! I have a message.” The man spoke in rural dialect. Vathana stepped forward. “Only for you,” the man snapped.
“See to the baby,” Vathana said quietly to Sophan.
“How many children have you?” The messenger smiled a snarling eerie smile as he said the idiom which might be interpreted as a simple greeting between old friends who had not seen each other for a long time, yet from his lips it came as a piercing threat. He did not let the young mother respond. “Your brother, Sakhon”—the man’s words were hard—“he should be with you.”
“Peou! Is he here? Who...”
“It is your father’s wish.”
“My father? Where is he? Did he send you? Is my mo—”
The messenger spoke quickly, stopping Vathana’s questions. “He’s home. He’s okay. He wishes Sakhon to live with you.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course.”
“For Angkar Leou to bring your brother you must help.”
“Certainly. For who? Help who!?”
“If you repeat a word of what I tell, you’ll not again see your father, mother or brother. You’ll be told what need be done. Befriend the American.”
Nang sat in the open field east of Baray, sat in the posture of perfect attention. He had matured in five months, had become bulkier with the arms and legs of a man instead of the spindles of a boy. Though he could still contract to look like a child he could no longer pull off the feat with certainty. His mind, too, had changed. A bitterness, a deeper distrust, had gripped its core. After June’s successful rear attacks on the NVA at Kompong Thom, after the ARVN recaptured the city from the Northerners, Nang had been recalled to Mount Aural. There he’d endured his first real kosang. At first Nang and Soth had bragged of their exploits to a group of new conscripts, to an operations officer, to three political commissars. They had spoken in generalities, relaying sketchy details, then, with greater and greater elan, Soth had boasted to the commissars how easily the mighty NVA soldiers fell.
“Comrades”—Soth had beamed—“you should have been there.” The commissar said nothing. “They are not gods,” Soth had shouted exactly as he’d heard Met Sar shout about the Americans. “They are not gods. Me, this backward hillbilly with a minimum of arms and men...we inflicted great loss upon them. Great loss. More casualties than FANK with its fighter-bombers. Haw ha! They never expected it. It was Nang. Met Nang. He is to be congratulated on ordering us. He is to be honored for his courage.”
Then, after accusation, led by Met Soth, a score of boys from their unit had condemned Nang, their platoon leader. For hours senior officials berated him until he, Nang, yothea of the Brotherhood of the Pure, confessed, broke, cried, withered like a tree plucked from the earth, like a little boy whose pants had been stolen from him at school.
Met Sar had badgered him for his arrogance and stupidity. “What have you done?!” Sar had screamed. “Do you realize the ramifications? The revolution struggles to attain victory over such contemptible personal pride.”
For more hours he had endured their screams. What had he done?! North Viet Namese reaction to the “fifth column” assault had been to covertly relegate the Krahom army to shadow status. No longer were battle plans, or attacks, shared. No longer were the nationalist Communists informed of NVA movements. No longer were the Khmer Krahom and the Khmer Viet Minh running parallel revolutions. The NVA/KVM-KK break was partial, informal. To the outside world, all Communist forces in Cambodia still appeared to be united under Norodom Sihanouk.
Nang’s fingers tightened. His teeth ground. One hour more, he thought. One day more. After all these months, it is nothing. Before him Met Sar prepared to address the troops assembled east of Baray. To one side were units in black uniforms from the Northern Zone, to the other were troops in gray from the East. Cadre and yotheas sat, chatted amongst themselves. A few men rose, left, returned. A cool d
rizzle fell. Cadremen lay their kramas over their heads for protection; yotheas opened theirs like small tents or in pairs or threes sat beneath huge banana leaves. Nang did not move. He sat with his krama wrapped like a turban about his head, with his pants rolled up to his knees. He visualized himself a cat, ready to pounce, waiting, patient, waiting for battle, or for Met Soth.
After the kosang he had been thrown into a small bamboo cage for three days. On the second evening Met Sar arrived, dismissed the guards, sat on the earth beside his caged protégé. “It’s okay,” Met Sar had whispered. “Be patient.” Nang had stared the stare of a captured beast. The older man had smiled and left. Hours later he’d returned. “They argue over your fate,” he’d said pleasantly. “Remember, I told you you’d have to swallow your pride.” The older man had rocked back on his round bottom and giggled. “Oh how they argued!” He’d turned to the cage, grabbed the bamboo with his soft pudgy hands. He rolled to his knees staring into the cage more wildly than Nang stared out. “Meditate on this.” The words had slid from Sar’s mouth like oil. “You have damaged the enemy. Your imprisonment has drawn out true attitudes. I am but an officer of the general staff, but I report to the one who must always remain masked. He knows of you. Of your work. When it is time, contradictory elements will be eliminated.”
For minutes the two had stared, frozen, locked in an evil aura passing between their eyes. Then Met Sar had grinned, rolled back onto his plump ass, and asked, “Tell me, Met Nang, did you kill them because they killed your father?”
“ ‘Soldiers,’ ” Met Sar began the address with a passage from another conqueror’s speech to his troops, “ ‘you have, in fifteen days, gained six victories, taken twenty-one stand of colors, fifty pieces of cannon, several fortified places, made fifteen hundred prisoners, and killed or wounded over ten thousand men.’ ” Met Sar stopped reading. He looked at the boy before him. “Do you think,” he asked harshly, “it was because of their superior numbers? Because of their materiel?” Met Sar smiled contemptuously, dropped his head.
For the Sake of All Living Things Page 38