For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Last night I’m like meat dripping blood thrown to the tigers with these new directives. They made a feeding frenzy of me. Today, you want me to move up! Oh, what’s that?”

  “Those are surface-to-air missiles. Come. We’re late.”

  Hang Tung sped past bunkers with overhead camouflage, past idle tanks and trucks parked in earthbound revetments, past hundreds of troops without weapons. Here the North Viet Namese were unopposed. Neither FANK to the southwest nor the ARVN/US forces to the east pressured “liberated” territory to this depth. The only concern was American high-level interdiction bombing. The vast majority of that was targeted in the Mekong-Bassac River corridor from the border to Phnom Penh. Second-priority targets were those within a few kilometers of the border; third, those at the advancing tips of NVA drives; finally, the identified supply and reinforcement columns. Even had the headquarters base been discovered, its priority on the target lists would have remained low.

  “Ah, Chairman Cahuom, it is a pleasure to have you here.”

  “Major Nui...” Chhuon began bringing his hands together, then jerkily halted.

  “Lieutenant colonel,” Hang Tung corrected Chhuon. Hang Tung had led Chhuon to a large structure cut into a hillside at the middle of the camp. The north wall was solid mountain, the south, a meter of earth then a meter of window facing downhill. The front portion of the roof was thatch with wide overhangs giving the structure the appearance of a mountain lodge. The rear portion was four feet of earth supported by heavy timbers. Above it grew vines, bushes—near-perfect camouflage.

  “Lieutenant colonel!” Chhuon corrected himself. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” Nui said amiably. “Come, I wish you to meet someone.”

  Hang Tung followed Chhuon and Lieutenant Colonel Nui between offices separated by woven-palm walls to a large central rear room. On two walls were maps, on the third large framed pictures of Norodom Sihanouk and Ho Chi Minh, and on the fourth small black-and-white photographs. In the center there was a low, flat sand table with a detailed model of Stung Treng City. Immediately a wave of fear flashed through Chhuon—the terror of having entered a forbidden sanctum. The model city seemed to leap from the table and seize him. His brother’s warehouse, his home, pulsating like alarm lights, details so specific Chhuon felt he could be reduced and live in the model, visit Cheam, load a toy truck with experimental seed.

  Chhuon swayed. He looked up to catch his balance. Black-and-white photos of his village caught his eye. There, his wife and Nimol at food distribution. There, the head of the Hem family and his cousin’s wife, Ry, at Ry’s front door. Another of Ry with a Viet Namese soldier. Another with two young militiamen. Chhuon looked to the maps. Lieutenant Colonel Nui prattled, asking of his health, of his family’s. Chhuon responded without hearing his own words. One wall had separate maps of eleven villages and a map of the entire Northeast. The other had maps of all Cambodia.

  “...you see,” Nui continued, “we wish to integrate the community, not take it over.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that.” The sentence seeped from Chhuon, detached.

  “The sand table?” Nui beamed with pride.

  “Yes....”

  “I was showing the colonel how we...he stepped out. I want you to meet him. He’s a fascinating man. And I want him to meet you. I want to show you off. Ha! You’re important to him. To all of us, you know. He stepped out for a moment. Where was I? Yes...for centuries our peoples have foolishly hated each other, Chairman Cahuom. We can’t deny the past yet our present struggles are interdependent. If we’re to save ourselves from the mire of imperialism and reach the shining road of the proletarian revolution, we must join arms. By integrating we can break the vicious cycle of prejudice.”

  “By integrating?” Chhuon did not understand.

  Hang Tung interrupted. “Uncle Chhuon is a master of khon thi chet, dai cung chet, biet moi song, eh, Colonel?”

  Nui smiled. Chhuon still looked confused. “ ‘One too clever dies, one too stupid dies; to survive one must know when to be clever, when foolish!’ Ha! Let’s face it”—Nui rubbed his face—“Khmers and Viets are both members of the international community. We both struggle. It’s foolish to hate. It depletes our energy. You agree?” Nui did not wait for Chhuon to respond. “That’s why my wife will live in your village. My son will go to school with your son. As Prince Sihanouk wishes, a dozen Viet Namese families will be so integrated. We’ll have a model village, eh? Not unlike this?” He gestured to the table. “An experiment,” he said. “Once we’ve achieved our inevitable victory over the imperialists there’ll be no borders. In every school children will learn to speak one tongue. We’ll make a new Indochinese man. And you, Chairman Cahuom Chhuon, shall see the beginning.”

  As Nui spoke Chhuon turned a few degrees from him and looked at the map of the northeast quarter of the nation. At first he noted the water features were in two shades of blue, monsoon-season water in light, year-round dark. Then he noticed the unusual road pattern, noticed the multiple routes descending from a hundred points along the Laotian border, merging into eight distinct clusters with three merging at the campsite where they stood. Various units were labeled in grease pencil on the acetate cover. As Chhuon’s eyes absorbed details the secret supply roads came to life. He could almost feel the thrust of descending armies, concentrating, then flowing southwest, south of Stung Treng City, west through the low forest and into the swamps and rice fields of the Sen and Chinit rivers about Kompong Thom, could almost hear the clatter of tanks and self-propelled field guns of the NVA 5th and 7th divisions as they headed for rendezvous with the clearly marked 91st. From there, he thought, where? The map ended and to face the next one would put him at such an angle to his host as to be disrespectful.

  “Your wife will need many things,” Chhuon said.

  “Committee Member Hang has a list.” The colonel beamed. He had expected sighs, perhaps objections presented as potential problems with other inhabitants, but Chhuon had shown not only complete acquiescence but an apparent interest and desire to cooperate. “Ah”—the Viet Namese officer raised his hand as if giving an invocation—“here is another most honored guest.” Chhuon turned to see a towering Caucasian. “Let me introduce Colonel Hans Mitterschmidt of the Democratic Republic of Germany. Colonel”—Nui changed tongue to French—“this is Chairman Cahuom Chhuon of Village 517. He is in total agreement with your integration plan.”

  Sullivan rode in at dusk. The sky was soft. Between breaks in the fast-moving clouds the evening’s first stars glowed. He rode slowly through Neak Luong. The used BSA Lightning motorcycle purchased from a departing British embassy employee purred steadily. He had not found much time to ride since the purchase, nor the momentum to bring him to Neak Luong, until this early July night when he no longer could stand the pressure and needed to see her. Huntley had delivered a truckload of school supplies in March—more in April and in June—school supplies, roofing, and a blackboard he’d appropriated from the Military Equipment Delivery Team (MEDT) briefing room. On the last trip he’d brought a message: “Augh, Mrs. Cahuom,” he’d drawled in English though Vathana understood little English and of his dialect not a word. “J. L. cain’t come rig-aht naa. God a’mighty, some reporter caught him teachin’ a FANK cap’n how ta use a prick-25...radio, ya know. God a’mighty, ma’am. He’s in a world a cow dung rig-aht up ta his ears. Gotta lie low.”

  As Sullivan rode in, for a quick moment he pictured himself a cowboy in a western, but the image did not hold off other thoughts. He blipped the hand throttle, the front wheel unweighted, the bike hopped, settled back. The town looked different. The anti-Sihanouk posters plastered to sidewalls of concrete apartment buildings had faded and shredded, and the inhabitants walking head down under the words took no notice of the slogans. The spirit which had spawned the Republic, which had brought Sullivan to Cambodia, was no longer apparent. In five months traffic in the city had become more motorized though the number of civi
lian cars and trucks had declined. Small motorcycles were everywhere. Old-timers clung close to building walls, seemingly trying to escape the raspy whine. The traditional buffalo-drawn farm carts had all but disappeared from the main road, though now idle they cluttered side alleyways. Military trucks, FANK and ARVN, lumbered more, as if the troops were “cruising the strip” rather than heading somewhere specific. And the people seemed different. The inflow of refugees had been nearly constant at about four hundred per month. The outflow almost matched, with around three hundred a month leaving for Phnom Penh. But the new refugees were more destitute than the old, more terrified, less likely to remain in the camp. At first they simply wandered away from their swamp hovels during daylight, but as the rainy season increasingly turned the camp into a horrid quagmire in which the sanitation system had broken down completely and malnutrition and stomach disorders, despite Vathana’s efforts, became widespread, many refugees built makeshift huts against the sides of in-town buildings from material begged or stolen. A second wave of ARVN soldiers had come to man the South Viet Namese river and road bases—many who had not taken part in the earlier battles—foreign soldiers with money who saw Neak Luong as their home base much as U.S. soldiers came to think of areas of South Viet Nam as “theirs.” With their wealth came higher inflation, thirty percent in the first six months of 1971; and with inflation came additional corruption and prostitution. “Whores earn more than doctors,” Doctor Sarin had complained to Vathana. “Little boys who sell Coca-Cola to the Saigon troops earn more than commanders of Republic garrisons.” Long-time residents of the city began to feel encircled, cramped, their early gracious generosity taxed beyond their ability to give. They closed their doors, hoarded the little they still retained, praying it would be sufficient to feed and clothe their own children. And although Sweden’s foreign minister, Torsten Nilsson, had announced his country would deliver a half million dollars in medical supplies to the Khmer Republic (plus an equal amount to the Viet Namese Communists), medicine was in critical shortage. (The Nixon administration, despite MEDT requests, refused to include drugs in the Commodity Import Program aid package and further blocked requests from Cambodia’s health minister to the International Red Cross for medicine and bandages—assuming either that these supplies would be stolen by the VC/NVA or that the giving would somehow contradict the administration’s “low profile” policy.)

  Neak Luong’s new countenance had three contrasting faces: one military, one the new rich, and one the new hungry and diseased masses, with the growing adjunct of roving child gangs, hustling young pimps, and younger prostitutes.

  To Sullivan, as he continued north on the main road, the scene was familiar. Why, he thought, had I thought it would be different here? Because of her? If anything it’s worse. More ARVNs. More poor Khmers. He rode past the pagoda with its high central spire and refugee huts clustered in every square meter about it. More huts, he thought. He flicked the throttle and headed to the camp.

  Vathana rocked the infant girl in a net hammock as stolid Sophan crawled on the tent’s dirt floor with the twenty-one-month-old Samnang. The boy’s hands had loosened, though when he crawled his fingers remained closed and he supported his weight on the backs of his wrists. “Come!” Sophan called playfully. “That’s it.” She held a toy wagon made from a sardine can. “How do you think your mother feels when you don’t crawl?” she whispered lovingly to the child.

  “What should I do?” Vathana asked. She sat on the edge of the cot she shared with the wet-nurse and her son.

  “What can you do?” Sophan answered not changing her tone.

  “She has told all their family—” Vathana began.

  “If she told the whole world and it weren’t true, how could it hurt you?”

  “My father’s sister thought I was dead.” Vathana’s voice was full of anguish. “She’d heard I’d run to the forest to join the Communists. What if my father heard? What if my mother believed her lies?”

  “You must renounce your marriage, Angel. What does Teck say?”

  “He says nothing. No word at all. I only hear from his mother.”

  “What about the children? Doesn’t she want to see them? She could take them to the capital, to her villa.”

  Tears came to Vathana’s eyes. The sadness wrenching outward from her abdomen twisted her features. “To her, the Wheel of Life is nonexistent. They are not part of her.”

  “Angel,” a young woman called quietly from beyond the partition. “Mister new-Captain John Sullivan is at the registration desk.”

  Sullivan bowed formally when Vathana appeared. At first he tried to repress his smile, to show shock at her loss of weight, to show empathy for her living situation, but he could not. A boyish smile brightened his face. It either reflected from her or caused her to relinquish her suffering, for she too beamed. He reached out and covered her clasped hands with his. A flood of words came from his throat before he knew he’d opened his mouth. “Yes. Yes.” She smiled up at him—he at five-ten, she barely five feet, her black eyes gazing into his blue.

  “The Dhammapada says, ‘Do not speak harshly to anyone,’ ” Vathana quoted.

  “ ‘Those who are spoken to will answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful; blows for blows will touch thee.’ ”

  “Americans say the same thing.” Sullivan heard his voice for the first time and wondered what they were talking about. “ ‘What goes around, comes around.’ The Marines add another line. ‘Payback’s a...’ Ah...well, it’s kind of similar.” He paused, aware suddenly that at least a hundred infirm, cot-ridden refugees were staring at them. “The rain’s stopped,” he said, stepping back, pulling gently. “It was a beautiful rain this afternoon.”

  “My father used to worship the rain,” Vathana murmured. “Because it renews the land. Here it only makes mud.”

  “Is there someplace we can go. I...I...want to talk. It’s kind of American of me, I know, but I’d prefer to talk alone.”

  Vathana smiled, assented. Then her face tightened. An image of a dark assaulter ripping her, clutching her, flashed in her mind. Sullivan was sunshine in darkness, winking, momentary, soon to withdraw and leave eternal night. “There’s a place by the river,” she whispered. “Let me tell Sophan.”

  Vathana had been ordered, for the protection of her brother and the camp, to become the American’s consort. This was terrible. She was the mother of two children. To lie with a long-nose, a fire-haired phalang... Society in Cambodia, in the camp, was closed. This was scandalous. She was ashamed. But, too, there existed a pang, a need, a growing attraction and infatuation beyond what was forced upon her.

  For an hour they sat, talking quietly, fishing in the dark Mekong with hand lines and hooks baited with parhok, small pieces of pickled fish.

  “I don’t know what’s happening.” Sullivan’s voice was thick with concern. “My country’s lost its, ah...I don’t know. Does it make any sense to you if I say it’s lost its masculinity?” Vathana sat very close to him. She leaned, pressed her shoulder against his. “Between men, when there’s friendship, each man gives the friendship his best. It doesn’t make any difference if one can give a lot and the other only a little. It’s as though what’s given is multiplied.”

  Again Vathana swayed into him. “Yes,” she said. “That’s like all friendship.”

  “Maybe. But...” He paused. “Masculine-feminine friendship is different.” Sullivan jerked on the fishing line then let it fall again. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go on. He didn’t want to build a wall between them. “I’m talking countries here,” he said. “Masculine and feminine traits in nations. If one gives in a feminine way to one in a masculine stance it’s like adding pluses and minuses. The given isn’t multiplied. It’s neutralized. When my country gives in a masculine way the given is multiplied. When it gives in a feminine way it negates what the receiver puts up. It’s apron-string giving. I’ll give you one hundred APCs if you’ll love me. I’m at the tail end of it. I’m the guy
who says, ‘Colonel, you told my country you’d do this and this if we put ten thousand rifles in your hands. Now I know you got the rifles so let’s see you show your love for me.’ Somebody in Washington defines the ‘this and this.’ Maybe ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ aren’t the right words.”

  “John, why is it you choose to work with Khmers? To fight beside Khmers?”

  “Why? Vathana, I wish you could see it. There are some good troops here. Some good leaders. Some of these guys can fight. I know the American press is full of stories about FANK corruption, FANK incompetence, but...I wish I could show you. The garrison at Takhmau was hit by the NVA 12th Regiment and they waxed the Commies’ asses....I mean....”

  “It’s okay.”

  “There’s this one guy up in Baray, Lieutenant Bousa. He’s really good. There’s a major at Chamkar Luong on Highway 4. When his troops aren’t fighting, and they’re the best in the South, they’re in the paddies his uncles and father had. They’ve got a truck farm there that feeds the whole battalion and their families.”

  “A farm of trucks!?”

  Sullivan laughed. “I guess that doesn’t translate, eh? A big vegetable farm. They have paddies and fishing boats. Some commanders charge their troops for rations. They get terrible soldiers. Major Preap’s are great. I’d fight with them anytime.”

  Vathana leaned into Sullivan again. He put his right arm around her. Very lightly he hugged her. Visually, in the darkness, she was but a silhouette against the Mekong. He squeezed her gently. She turned her face up to his. Suddenly it hit him. He didn’t know if traditional Khmers kissed. He wanted to kiss her. Instead he repeated with concern, “I don’t know what’s happening. My country’s...They think”—he slipped the fishing spool under his left leg—“they can bomb without complete intelligence, without follow-up by skillful infantry maneuvers...” Vathana placed her left arm around his back and snuggled against him. “You can’t drop an arc-light on a village because there’s a T-54 parked on the green.” She leaned against him and he lay back. Sullivan watched a mosquito alight on her hair. He reached up and gently pushed it into flight. About them the earth’s surface lay black-and still. Slowly, quietly, they hugged, kissed, embraced more and more passionately. Across the river, deep in the swamp, a firefight erupted then faded.