For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “N...n...n...”

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said calmly. “Go with those yotheas. They will escort you. In case of a bombing.”

  The woman who’d soiled herself left. Ravana strode back to the small one-step-high stage. “Sit!”

  His eyes shifted. Still the smell lingered. “Turn yourselves over to Angkar to be rebuilt. Trust in Angkar, in the Movement, in the Revolution. Sihanouk was corrupt. Sihanouk was despicable. Sihanouk was oppressive.” Ravana paused. Chhuon’s eyes were locked on his. “You will launch an offensive to gain great victories of rice production to sustain the army and to defend our independence against imperialists and monarchists.” Chhuon thought of Met Than and her whispered news of Samdech Euv. This denunciation, this level of denunciation, was new to the “liberated and regained peoples.” It marked the transition from physical relocation to political reeducation. Why? Chhuon tried to think. Ravana ranted on. “Our goal is pure and classless humanity unencumbered by the dogma and doctrine of false gods and false civilizations.” The bombing, Chhuon thought as the kana khum raged, it has dislodged their fears. They are weak. They are vulnerable. “...in cities civilization is born, grows. In cities civilization differentiates between people, and that begets classes. Cities must be destroyed...” What stops something from reaching in and annihilating them? Chhuon thought. They are afraid! The thought amazed him. They are more afraid even than I am. They don’t believe their own words. It’s fear that induces in them this fanaticism—fear of revenge against them, fear of...

  Again Met Ravana was ranting against Norodom Sihanouk. “...to speak that name, henceforth, will be punishable by death...” No, Chhuon thought, I must not have heard correctly. Without moving his head he attempted to force his eyes far enough sideways to seek Sok’s reaction. He could not see her.

  So afraid, his thoughts began again. Then he saw Met Than, saw her short straight hair neatly combed, saw the even bangs lapping at her eyebrows, saw her clouded eyes. It did not register. It could not be. Than was one of them. She was there, before him, a head on a board, there without her body. Met Ravana slapped the head and it flew from the board into the midst of shrieking women. Chhuon swallowed. He thought, awkwardly, How, how, how did I do that?! And then he knew, was certain, without thought, that he, like Sok, like them all, was unalterably trapped in a commune of his own making.

  In June there had been six nocturnal meetings in Phum 117; in early July, none. As B-52s were unleashing their ordnance about Phnom Penh and Neak Luong, the liberated commune in the far North was slowly recovering. The hopelessness and depression of April, the feeling of being incompetent in the new ways, had ebbed. The tension of May, the continual fear of being a bomb target, abated. And the horror of June’s night sessions faded in the constant forced labor. Even Sok, though daily she still muttered “We are lost,” seemed to have finally acclimated to the order of Angkar.

  “A little more, eh?” Chhuon’s voice resounded in the pelting grayness of an early July rain. “Raise it higher,” he shouted. The water in the seedbed rose steadily until it was a finger’s width from the tips of the rice seedlings. “Ah. Close it,” Chhuon yelled up to his helpers. “Let’s move on to the next.” In the larger fields below the seedbeds men dragged logs over the furrowed mud, flattening the earth in preparation for planting the seedlings. “That’s it,” Chhuon called. “Open it for this feeder.” Water from the small boray gushed into the trench which led to the seedbed where Chhuon now stood. The operation was efficient, the water moved swiftly. Chhuon smiled, then remembering it was criminal to smile, cleared his face. Still he felt happy, pleased that the new agricultural layout was working, pleased at how perfectly the rain had fallen, at how beautifully the seedlings were growing, at how straight were the dikes and how level were the feeder ditches and at how well the water-control teams and the log teams worked. Only the memory of Than, the mekong who’d let him build a proper system but who’d been beheaded for speaking the old monarch’s name, only that thought dampened his spirit this wonderfully rainy morning.

  Since the rain had begun in earnest, there had been no bombings. At first Chhuon had thought the planes couldn’t fly in the heavy rain, but he knew that wasn’t the case. Then he’d thought that the aerial detection men must have finally realized that Phum 117, Khum 4, was not a fortification or a training camp but only a peasant commune trying to raise enough rice on which to subsist. He knew nothing of the great bombings about Phnom Penh and the lesser bombings at Kompong Cham, Neak Luong and to the west at Siem Reap. Things were looking up. Even the local cadre had eased off. As long as the work progressed steadily, as long as everyone labored hard, they were being left alone.

  “Let’s go,” Chhuon called to the two men who’d opened and redammed the spillways to the various seedling paddies. “Well done, Sichau.” Chhuon’s voice was clear. “Well done, Moeung.”

  Quietly Moeung said, “You’d best call us ‘Met,’ Chairman Chhuon. There may be ears in the paddies.”

  Chhuon did not pause or acknowledge the warning. “Let us spell Team Four. They’ve pulled the log all day. Let’s show them what three old men can do, eh?”

  Chhuon’s enthusiasm infected Sichau but the fever, like all enthusiasm in Phum 117, was low grade. Soon, as the three skinny men—Chhuon now fifty, the other two in their mid forties—on their six spindly legs with the six bulbous knees well displayed beneath their rolled-up trousers—pulled the log, they were puffing and panting and only occasionally talking.

  “Chhuon...” Moeung blew words out one per breath, “I...heard...Soth...he’s...replaced...by...Ravana.”

  “Eh?” Chhuon puffed back.

  “My wife...” Sichau spoke more smoothly than the others, “...she says...she heard from the mekong...we are to raise...to the next level...of community.”

  “What...” Chhuon did not turn but continued pushing on the bamboo pole—“...does that...mean?”

  “Eh...” Sichau said. “...tonight we’ll hear.”

  Chhuon, Sichau, Moeung, all the new and old peasants of Phum 117, didn’t know what event triggered that night’s reeducation session and the new harsh reprisals. But some cadre knew; some were held accountable. Fifty kilometers south-southwest in the direction of Kompong Thom, in the absence of a strong force because so many Khmer Krahom yotheas had been sent to the front, forty thousand “liberated” peasants had escaped to government lines.

  “It is the most severe crime...” Ravana addressed the men workers of Phum 117. They had not been permitted to return to their huts; they had not eaten. Torches had been brought to the field Chhuon had been dragging at dusk. “...in the eyes of Angkar. Anyone attempting to escape will be arrested, tried and taken away. Why should anyone wish to leave? Angkar provides for everything. Angkar cares for all. Angkar is good.

  “Are you curious? What’s next door? There”—Ravana pointed north into the night—“there is a commune of monks. There they learn to become productive members of the community; they are taught to earn their own way.” He ranted for an hour then was quiet for some time, then he left. He did not dismiss them. All night they sat in the field. One by one the torches burned out. The rain came at times hard, at times gently. When the rain was softest the omnipresent metronome of crickets lulled the men toward sleep. Yet all feared sleeping, for sleeping during a meeting might be a crime. Sichau’s head drooped onto Chhuon’s shoulder. He snapped it up. Another torch burned out. He laid his head against Chhuon and fell asleep. On the other side Moeung did the same, turning slightly so the back of his shoulder was to Chhuon’s back. Chhuon moved slightly so the three formed a tripod. At first he could not sleep. He pondered one line Ravana had repeated several times: “...though our rice farmers were greatly oppressed and are now free, they must still learn a proper agricultural worker’s nature. They must be instilled, via socialist ideals, with a working-class spirit....”

  The next day they worked the field without having seen their huts, without having eaten. Chhu
on pondered...to mold all members of our society into productive elements...To him, the phrases seemed overly simplistic, but in his weariness and hunger he wished only to use them to sidetrack his mind. For a while he repeated to himself...reeducation through work...reeducation through work...He thought of his notebooks and thought what he would write. By dusk he was feeling very weak and fantasized about the bowl of rice Sok would have waiting for him. Still they worked...productive elements...he thought. Why not productive people? Productive families? Ravana’s shrill voice had lambasted them about families. Families were for producing productive elements—some such nonsense. When families could no longer produce new elements they should be dissolved. Chhuon almost chuckled to himself at that thought. Dissolved! We’re not lumps of sugar. Once you are a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, he thought, you are always that. It is not something that can be dissolved.

  Again that night the men were grouped in a field. The rain had stopped and the ground came alive with thousands of large brown moths. A new kitchen staff came to the field and served the men rice soup and bananas. They were not released and again slept in their back-to-back tripods. Again they labored without sustenance. Chhuon forgot about Ravana, and all day he fantasized about Sok and the meal she would prepare. That night when the men returned to their huts there were no women. They had been moved to a new women’s barracks built a forbidden half kilometer to the east.

  As the assaults on the capital heart area continued, as other government enclaves were attacked, Vathana sat, sat by the first of the small mud huts, sat in the rain staring into the dying embers of the night’s cooking fire, letting the rain soak her long thick black hair and run down her cheeks like tears though she was not sad, not crying. Around her the few soldiers and the many association women huddled in the dark, eating, picking the last grains from their plates, barely moving, yet to her they whizzed by, passed so quickly their speed blurred their images. Time accelerated, yet each moment stretched out for all eternity.

  Keo Kosol had tried to talk her out of it. He had grabbed her shoulders, touched her as he hadn’t in months, she so passive in his hands he’d dropped them to his sides in disgust. “You want to believe the rumors,” he’d said, “then go ahead. But then you’d believe anything, eh?” Still she’d remained inert. “The reason”—Kosol’s voice rose—“they were so harsh in the border area was because the Americans and the Viet Namese were there.”

  “And in the North?” she’d whispered without moving.

  “Everyone knows those people...those province people are lazy. They don’t work hard like our peasants. But we’re hard workers. We’ll produce for them and we’ll gain the paradise they promise.” He had yelled at her many more things. “Look at this.” He’d waved an old newspaper before her. “The American actress, Fonda, remember what she says. ‘...if you understood what Communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday become Communists.’ She knows! Americans know, eh?! Now you must stop this craziness.”

  Still Vathana had not responded. Kosol ranted on. “They’ll kill you with their bombs. You want that, eh? Look here!” He’d waved that day’s paper. “ ‘Eighty B-52 sorties. Sixty-four hundred bombs! Each day!’ Americans...they don’t care about Khmer people. Only about their bomb-making industry. Two million dollars...every day...yet children in your camp starve. What aid comes to the refugees? Not even half a million for a million refugees in three years! They’ve removed the middle path! They must go!”

  Then Vathana had wept. Then tears had slid down her cheeks. More gently Keo Kosol had said, “The Khmer Rouge are Cambodian. Do we need Dr. Kissinger’s approval for Khmer to talk to Khmer? When the war is over, the cruelty will cease. We shall walk the middle path again.”

  Still she had gone forward, led how many she did not know, did not count. It didn’t matter to her whether they were organized or not, whether they brought a kilo of provisions or ten thousand. Only that she go. That she was followed by forty from the Soldiers’ Mothers Association she did not know. That members of the Liberation Youth, the Rivermen for a Just Government, the Refugee Association, and the Khmer Patriots for Peace all joined her, did not gratify her. The rain came harder.

  Earlier, even before Kosol’s harangue, she’d sat looking at her babies, at Samnang, at Samol. How the war overshadowed their lives, she’d been thinking. How will it be on this one? she’d thought, passing her hands over her bulbous abdomen. Will the schools reopen? Will they ever know their father? She’d felt so tired, so numb. Rumors were being passed that cigarettes, gasoline and even electricity were being rationed in Phnom Penh. She’d heard and she’d thought, Good! Perhaps they will understand what life is like for us.

  She’d wanted to stop thinking about the children so she’d left the tent only to see hundreds, thousands more—idle children beneath the growing number of cardboard or thatch or scrap truck fender shanties disintegrating in the rain. Why? she’d thought, and the pain sat heavy on her shoulders and in her bowels and in her tired legs. Why hasn’t the rain stopped the Khmer Rouge? Still they attack the capital. Will it fall? Today? Or Kompong Cham? She could feel the shaking earth as she watched the children, then she could hear the not-so-distant sound of explosions, and she’d thought, Are they invincible? Where is Norodom Sihanouk? He would never allow things to be so bad. He must not know. Where is Teck? Where is Papa? Her lower jaw trembled and she tried to chase those thoughts away. Some people say the Khmer Rouge have engaged an evil spirit. In exchange for invincibility they have traded their souls. If only...

  Windswept raindrops flew beneath the poncho roof over the fire and sizzled in the embers. The front was very close. Indeed, she was now at the back of the front. In the rainbound dark a wide circle of fires of FANK’s defenders flickered sporadically. Neak Luong, the southern citadel on the Mekong, defender of the southern approach to the heartland, was again an isle in the Communist-conquered sea.

  Sarin Sam Ol had heard of her plan and had come to the camp to talk. “It is very dangerous,” he cautioned her halfheartedly.

  “Yes,” she’d said, not agreeing but confirming that she’d heard, that she knew the words though they no longer had meaning in Neak Luong, that she respected the doctor’s thought.

  “I won’t come to help,” he’d said.

  “I understand,” she’d answered.

  “Then I will say good-bye. I have received a visa for France. There is an eye doctor...”

  “Then see him.”

  He reached out, grasped her hands as if passing a blessing. “You understand. I can do nothing. Nothing.”

  After Doctor Sarin had left, Vathana had written a sketch of his anguished ordeal and sent it via messenger to Rita Donaldson. It was her twentieth such letter. For each she received the equivalent of two dollars, enough to buy eighteen pounds of rice on the black market—at just above starvation levels, enough to feed her, Sophan and the children for one week.

  “You understand,” she had ended the account, “I can do nothing. Nothing.”

  But I can do something, she’d thought. She’d talked to Rita—when, she couldn’t remember. Time had become so warped she was unsure if it were this life or the last. “This is Louis”—she’d introduced the young man who’d been her husband’s friend. Rita had glared at the disheveled, angry soldier.

  In Khmer Louis, glaring back at the blue-eyed Western woman, snapped at Vathana, “Does she know you carry a kid that’s not your husband’s?”

  “You came to me,” Vathana shot back. “This is what I can do.”

  “What does he say?” Rita did not hide her dislike for him.

  “He says,” Vathana spoke alternately in Khmer and in French as if Louis did not understand French, “he needs help. He says he will desert unless he has food and is paid.”

  “When was the last time he ate?” Rita asked.

  Vathana translated then listened and translated back. “Two days,” she said. “But he says they have had only small rations
for two months. Had he not been caught in the general conscription he would never serve this government.” Louis sprayed out another angry burst. “He says, those with families here eat because the families bring them food but those without families are starving.”

  They had talked for an hour when Louis said he had to go or they’d come for him. Alone the women spoke amiably and Rita Donaldson pulled from her shoulder satchel a plastic bottle of protein tablets. She kissed Vathana and whispered, “For your baby. So it will be strong.” Then again she pulled a book from her bag and said, “Translate this for me, dear. Now I must go. Your stories are very good.”

  Vathana had held the book, staring at the sad cover for some minutes. She opened the bottle and took two tablets then looked back at Regrets for the Khmer Soul by Ith Sarin. The cover was a heart-shaped map of Cambodia torn in two by the Mekong River. Before she could open it Louis had returned, had scowled, spat. “Teck has joined my unit,” he’d said. “Give your pussy to others, but give your husband some food.”

  A mile, perhaps two, into the blackness, lights popped hazy through the rain, burst in a row in the amorphous dark. Then came the quaking and the thunder. The ash of the cooking fire tumbled exposing the last hot coals. A mud hut collapsed. Three soldiers cussed and stamped and shook the clods from their heads and bodies.

  Vathana and three association women rose. There is something we can do, she had told them without emotion, without ardor. “We can help the wounded. We can feed the unfortunate. We can show compassion for those who seek only to defend their own homes and their own families, for those demoralized, for those who fight without hope of victory.”

  16 July 1973, 0430 hours: What was that! He jerked but did not rise. His eyes, red, angry, obsessed, flicked, searched. Behind them the village still smoldered. Before them FANK troops were moving—maybe withdrawing. In two hours it would be light, in two hours the Krahom 91st Regiment would again attack. Nang pushed his torso up off the earth, swept his eyes back and forth across the battlefield. The B-52s had hit them—hit them again, hit them at dusk, two three-plane flights, six sorties, 324,000 pounds of bombs. The eleventh straight day of being hit, still they attacked, the thirty-fourth day in two months, yet they continued forward, always forward, nearly six hundred million pounds of iron-encased high explosives expended against him, against Nang and his 91st Armed Infantry Regiment of the 4th Brigade of the Army of the North, against some forty to fifty thousand armed Krahom yotheas—expended in the heaviest bombing of the Southeast Asian war, expended against the most ruthless “Pure Flame” land assault in history. Attack! Nang ground his teeth. We must attain victory before the yuons rebuild and devour us. The Party line—it was his faith, his need to believe to press on. Again the noise. He startled. What was that!