Rita Donaldson broke through the FANK-civilian traffic jam and headed for her office in the capital, now only eleven kilometers away. Now 122mm rockets launched from the morning’s battlefield, from the now continuous B-52 target area, were crashing into city center. She was afoot. The velo-cabs had disappeared. Some streets were vacant as if the inhabitants believed their flimsy houses could protect them from the rockets. Other streets, particularly in refugee-dense quarters, were packed with bodies bumping aimlessly into one another. There was no refuge, nowhere else to go.
By dusk new KK units and replacements had ventured into the no-man’s-land—many, perhaps most, successfully crossing to the front line. The attack recommenced its suicidal fury. Bombers received clearance to release death closer. Bomb boxes overlapped, sorties doubled, tripled on single targets, dumping more than three hundred bombs within a square mile; doubled again, saturating identified massed-unit zones—650 five-hundred-pound bombs in under one minute. On the ground there were no options left except savage fanatical assault. “The Americans are not gods,” Nang screamed again and again. He’d been jarred to the core—numbed to the core—reduced to bashed painlessness, to zombodial shocked let-them-expend-themselves-on-me-because-I-can-endure-ness. Attack. Attack the hated imperialist lackeys, hate their war tools, hate the FANK pawns. The more he was pounded the more energy was absorbed by his hate, by his angry appalled detesting abhorring hate. Hate driving revenge. Hate demanding vengeance. Every step now, every order now driven by the need, the need to destroy that enemy, the need to destroy everything associated with it, the need to slaughter, murder, liquidate, the need to ravage that fungal distant nation which had sent its robotic war machines to pulverize Kampuchea. For five days the attack continued. For five days firing raged, the Krahom advancing in spurts, FANK digging in here, there, falling back, returning, both armies near total exhaustion, both armies devastated.
On the fifth day, 21 July, a bomb’s eruptive force blew out from its earth crater a windwave, out, up, expanding, throwing shrapnel from casing and crater in a billowing sphere, expanding concussive shock-sound-heat then collapsing in upon itself. Nang grabbed his face. Beside him Duch tried to speak, was speaking, pointing at Nang, but Nang couldn’t hear. Blood flooded Nang’s left eye. He couldn’t see. Yet he saw the image of horror on Duch’s face, Duch screaming though the side of his own head had been blown off.
“22 July 1973—Phnom Penh:” Rita typed. “Though the Communist offensive against the southern and eastern fronts of this city continues, the line of last resort has held. Field and aerial reconnaissance reports indicate the northern defensive ring has halted the Khmer Rouge advance and has broken that attacking force.”
It marked the end of sympathy, the end of charity, the end of compassion. It marked the end of life and the beginning of life, the end of love and its rebirth. 6 August 1973—yet dark.
Vathana sat cross-legged at the head of the cot in the far corner of the infirmary tent. Above her, rain patted the canvas; to her left side, water trickled off the base of the flap into the flooded drainage ditch. On the cot to her right she had a sheath of handwritten pages, the first half of the translation of Regrets for the Khmer Soul, for Rita Donaldson. Resting facedown against her eight-and-a-half-month-pregnant belly was Ith Sarin’s book. Passages of the book were reassuring; others were terrifying. Angkar this, Angkar that. Angkar, the Organization, a dehumanized entity demanding complete, yet at times benevolent, control; a near-mystical omnipotence combined with assistance to farmers and an absence of corruption. Plus battles between Khmer and Viet Namese rebels! Could Ith Sarin be believed? Certainly John Sullivan would have believed him. Plus, the book reported, Norodom Sihanouk was but a dupe, a powerless figurehead!
Vathana had turned the pages against her belly, closed her eyes, and was thinking of these strange revelations when she felt the earth tremble, opened her eyes and saw the flame jump off the candle then burn down the smoke and reignite. So many bombs had fallen about Neak Luong that their devastating rumble outside the city barely brought conscious concern. But beneath, amongst all the other tensions of war-torn Cambodia, amid the continuing and renewed offensive along the Mekong, the quaking was one more repressed horror. Only one cannot, Vathana thought, give in. One must keep going, keep doing what is necessary. Then she thought of the book on her abdomen, the descriptions of ruthlessness on her fetus, and she immediately jerked the book up and tossed it away like a hot coal.
Southeast of the city, Teck sat with Louis in a new Auto-Defense Militia prepared fighting position. Teck had given up his FANK commission to return to this city. The Auto-Defense Militia was a home district defense force similar to South Viet Nam’s regional and popular forces. In six months, while growing to a strength of 57,000, it had become the Republic’s first line of defense for the enclaves. Once the Khmer Rouge drive on Phnom Penh began to falter, to deteriorate with amazing speed, the militias blossomed. Still the Communists had not stopped, but now they assaulted neither daily nor in such force as they had only two weeks earlier. Neak Luong’s defensive ring was now the front.
“It’s not a Monet,” Louis joked, shining his flashlight onto Teck’s chest.
“Not bad, eh?” Teck had pulled his shirtfront up to his shoulders. “Really, pretty good, eh?”
“When did they do it?”
“Four months ago. Maybe five. At a parlor in Phnom Penh.”
“You think it’ll stop bullets?”
Teck laughed. “No, my good friend.” He let his shirt fall down over the tattoo. “It was a lark, you know?”
“You can have a lark, eh?” Louis said. “You smile so much now. More than ever. Me, I wish we could go back like before the war.”
“You know why I’m happy?” Teck said. “You know, eh? Every day Vathana brings me food. Every day I pat my hand on her belly and I say I am a lucky man.”
“With a bastard!?”
“With a wonderful wife. Ahh! So I’ve shared her? So what? I watch her with all these men. I see her direct all those women who come to help. I see she really is an angel and I think I am a very lucky man.”
“You sound like a dumb peasant!”
“Maybe. Maybe by choice, eh?”
“You’ve told her these things, eh?”
“No. How could I?”
“If you’re so lucky,” Louis said—in his dejection he could not smile again—“wish that the Khmer Rouge go away. Maybe...if only the Americans would bring in a few battalions, eh? Then they could be out here in this filth listening to those damned bombs explode.”
Vathana opened her eyes. The sound of a Cambodian air force unmuffled T-28 came from over the river. It’s early, Vathana thought, for them to be up. Who could pay so much bonjour to have them up this early? She closed her eyes. The sound and the thought passed. Her fetus moved. Just a small kick. Pretty soon, baby, she thought. Her mind descended into her abdomen, into the fetus. The baby was in good position. Vathana was certain, was certain the baby told her this. No complications, eh, my sweetlove, her mind sent the message and again she was certain the infant answered: Yes, Mother, nothing to fear. Vathana felt a rush of joy, an overwhelming flood of contentment, but the fetus did not release her mind. Instead it directed it and she sailed out her back to Phum Sath Din to a time when Norodom Sihanouk held power and her father talked of an emerging Buddhist-socialist state. Vathana looked up. Her mother was laughing and humming and busying herself cleaning the house. Vathana rushed to her with the wild flowers she’d picked and she hugged her leg and smelled her mother’s fragrance—sweeter than any flower, sweeter than ripe bananas, sweeter than sugarcane. She looked into her mother’s face so wrinkled from her wonderful smile and Vathana felt the simple and quiet tie of love from generation to generation which...she spiraled back, snapped back like a rubber band stretched to breaking...the devastating rumble outside the city—immediately her subconscious alerted her it was off pattern...a part of her lingered in Phum Sath Din, but time release
d, sped, and Vathana saw the wrinkles in her mother’s face deepen to the day Samnang and Mayana were lost...snapping back through her back, through the fetus, her eyes wide open.
Miles above, a B-52 had locked on a navigation beacon located improperly at the mayor’s in-town villa-office. Miles before the bomber was over Neak Luong the navigator—had he been reading about the upcoming National Football League season on the long flight from Guam?—“forgot” to flip the offset switch which would order the plane’s flight-direction computer to make the minute adjustment away from the beacon toward the targeted coordinates. The bomb bay doors were spread. “Hack,” said the pilot. “Hack,” answered the bombardier. For thirty seconds the load spilled from the mother ship’s abdomen. The plane banked for its return flight before the first five-hundred-pounder, following an unturned trajectory, burst behind Teck and Louis and Neak Luong’s 1st Auto-Defense Battalion.
In the infirmary tent, in the camp, in town, the constant subconscious terror which keeps war-zone inhabitants alert in sleep exploded tens of thousands awake. In ten seconds thirty bombs, fifteen thousand pounds of iron and explosive, erupted down Highway 1, down Main Street, hitting the hospital, the old stilt houses, Doctor Sarin’s looted office, piers, the concrete apartment building, the fish market and pagoda and orphanage and on up into the old Chinese section and FANK’s north-city garrison, then farther, the remainder of the load blowing in the few secure paddies and vegetable fields still enclaved.
Vathana leaped, leaped like a gazelle with a ball and chain, up from the cot leaving her abdomen fractionally behind, crashing into the lurching Sophan, Vathana’s belly pulling her back down, Sophan’s body smacking her as the stolid old peasant woman smothered Samnang and Samol beneath her protective muscle and fat and bone. Vathana, sprawled flat on her back, rolled to her knees and plopped atop Sophan, protecting too the precious future of Kampuchea, yet the danger had already passed, the last bomb’s concussive force was spent.
Neak Luong, which had been purposely shelled and reshelled by the NVA, which had been intentionally mortared and rocketed by the KK, which had been callously looted by its own child gangs and maliciously abused by FANK and foreign Allied soldiers, which had come to look more and more like a war zone, like an old battlefield, now smoldered and reeled from this most terrible, accidental bombardment.
“Dear Sweet Buddha,” Teck mumbled, shocked at the instantaneous devastation behind him. He rose.
“What the fuck...” Louis rose with him. Teck took a slow numbed step toward town. “Where are you going?”
“Where would she be? It’s almost dawn. She’ll be praying at the wat.”
“Wait!”
“No. I’ve got to”—along the front hundreds of Auto-Defense men were up, appalled yet numbed into momentary disbelief—“find her. Oh Dear Sweet Buddha.”
“I’ll go too,” Louis said. He grabbed his and Teck’s M-16s. Now others were running, now they too ran.
“Halt!” an officer commanded.
“My wife!” Teck shrieked.
“Get back!” the officer boomed. “What if the Communists attack?”
Thousands swarmed in from every side of the city. “I must go,” Teck cried.
In the tent many people were crying. Some were packing their worn clothing, leaving. The entire camp was up. Sophan was quietly hugging the children, not fully aware of Vathana’s weak moans. Vathana blew out her breath, then panted. She was on her knees holding the edge of the cot. Her uterus had clamped down like a giant’s fist trying to squeeze a pea from its pod. Past pain is impossible to remember but in pain it is easy to recall, to anticipate, to fear along with all the fears and concerns of birthing. Again she blew out her breath, panted. She wanted to grab Sophan’s arm but she could not. She wanted to ask someone, anyone, for help, but she could not. She gritted her teeth. The contraction passed and another came. She would hold on a moment longer, she told herself. She would cross the great ocean alone like all mothers must. Sweat beads broke on her brow. The kneeling position was not uncomfortable and she did not have the energy or the willpower to waste on moving. Again a contraction grabbed her and she thought of the pain, of the struggle, or the suffering and she saw them as a gift to this child and as a repayment to her own fragrant mother.
“Oh good, you’re all right.” The voice was deep, mournful.
Sophan released the children who’d not once squirmed to escape as if they’d known how great their being hugged consoled their old “aunt.” “And you,” Sophan said politely.
“Immoral fucking foreigners.” Keo Kosol’s voice was loud. He wanted everyone in the tent to hear it, to know how he felt. “Why pray?” he snapped at Vathana who had not turned to him. “There are thousands who need your...”
“Angel!” Sophan blurted.
Rita Donaldson jumped gingerly from the press helicopter. The day was partially overcast yet behind the clouds the sun stood high in the sky. Newer reporters, younger cameramen, jostled for position but she barely moved. Her left leg was wrapped tightly with elastic bandages because of knee ligaments she’d torn on the rush from the northern front two weeks earlier. She thought to excuse herself to her colleagues saying she couldn’t run after them but that was not the case. She simply could see, without moving, the destruction. “You”—she gestured for a teenage boy. “Parlez-vous français?” No response. She held out two stacks of riels. In Khmer she said, “Mrs. Cahuom Vathana. Angel of Neak Luong.” She gave the boy one stack, waved the other. “Here bring,” she said.
“Sending the kid for Cokes?” a reporter from Boston asked Rita Donaldson.
“Um,” she answered. She did not wish to have the young man follow her.
“Did you get the part from the briefing officer about the payments?” he asked.
“Hundred dollars per death,” she said, not looking at him.
“Yeah,” he scoffed self-righteously. “Thirteen thousand seven hundred dollars. It cost more to deliver one bomb!”
“Yeah,” Rita said.
“Did your paper send you that Air War report by the Cornell group?”
“I’ve read it.”
“You remember the part about the mismatch in power in the confrontation between a major industrial power and a predominantly rural, underdeveloped country?”
“Quentin”—Rita turned on him—“how long have you been here now?”
“Ten days, Rita.”
“Ms. Donaldson.” She glared at him.
“Ah, yeah. Anyway, what do you think? The report said in the absence of reciprocity, they can’t bomb us, right? The battle raises moral issues beyond military factors. I’m going to use that in my lead.”
“Um-hum.”
“The military keeps denying the inaccuracy of the bombings,” he went on, “but look at this place.”
“They also deny that Cambodia is in crisis situation,” she said. She thought to continue but decided against it. The entire press corps chatted constantly about their stories and what finally came through was a homogeneous puree of reduced and preedited facts. Rita bit the inside of her cheek. What, she thought, would have happened on the northern front, without aerial support? Absence of reciprocity? Do you want to be bombed?
Vathana was now on the cot. Her knees were spread, her heels were under her buttocks. Keo had been overly attentive, holding her shoulders, supporting her, talking in his most beautiful voice into her ears. At first it had bolstered her waning confidence but quickly it became bothersome. All about the tent people were talking about Vathana’s labor and about the air raid. Many were still weeping. The number of dead and wounded crept up—50 and 150, 100 and 200, 120 and 250. Many people were stoic, spartan, denying, repressing, internalizing the grief. Vathana too was bitter. Three years, she thought. Three years for naught. These people are no better off today than the day this tent was raised. Another contraction hit.
“That’s it, Angel. Give in to it. Surrender to it. Let it flow. Let me see the baby.”
&n
bsp; The contraction passed. Shyly Samnang came close for a hug and Vathana held him and kissed his hair and he blubbered, “ba-ba-ba-ba,” and ran off to see what else was happening.
Again Vathana’s uterus squeezed down. Again she lost herself in thoughts of what could be done. The country has never been worse off. And she answered herself, Nothing. Nothing. Despair grabbed hold of her heart.
Then, “Yes. Yes,” Sophan sung, cheered.
“Eh?” Kosol’s face was brilliant. His chest puffed out.
The contraction’s force was immense. Vathana’s buttocks tightened, her thighs quivered, as she exhaled her cheeks flapped. She pushed. She pushed. She stopped. Her chest heaved regaining air. She shifted to the cot’s edge and Sophan squatted before her. Then her whole body bore down. “Very good,” she heard Sophan’s words. “Let it be very hard. Give me that baby.” Now came the top of a hairy, wrinkled, waxy head. “Oh come, baby,” Sophan cried. “Come, little darling.” Waters covered Sophan’s hands. Vathana grunted. More head comes, ears and eyes. Sophan lifts Vathana’s hand from her quaking thighs and places Vathana’s fingers on the infant’s head. Vathana feels the nose, the mouth. The baby’s mouth seems to kiss her fingers. Vathana’s entire body is recharged. Again she pushes and the head is in Sophan’s hands, turning as if searching upward for mom, then shoulders, an arm, now quickly the torso. Sophan wipes the infant’s face, its head. She pulls and clears its nose. Catches it. “A girl!” She squeals. She hands the baby to Vathana, who is being lowered to the cot by Kosol.
For the Sake of All Living Things Page 79