“Bub-ba. Bah-ba-ba-ba.”
“Don’t be frightened.” It is an old woman. Perhaps not so old. She is in rags. “What’s your name?”
“Cahuom Vathana.” Vathana has not moved. From where she has fallen she sees the wraith standing by the angel house. The post is thick with vines but the little shrine is intact.
“Then you are my niece.” The voice is lithesome.
“Who are you?” Vathana sees the woman has no eyes. “Where is the village?”
“Grandpa?” Su Livanh whispers.
“I came from the pile of the dead, Niece. But I am not dead. My husband wanted me to go with him but I told him it was better he go alone.”
“Go? Go where?”
“They have all gone. Years now. You must go too. You can’t...”
“How do you live, Auntie?”
“I find food.” She laughs an ugly distorted cackle and Su Livanh crushes to her mother’s side. “Bury the dead child here. In the orchard. Then you must go. Go west.” Again the cackle. “You can’t stay here. Go now. West. Otherwise they will send you to the ancestors.”
The small paddies carved from the jungle in late 1973 and improved in 1974 by the inhabitants of Phum 117 had been abandoned. New jungle had been cut without leaving treelines. The people were roused at four in the morning and sent to work moving the new dike, constructing the connectors, filling the year-old feeder trenches which regulated the irrigation level. Eight hundred people worked the new system, Chhuon amongst them. He clawed at the laterite clods as he planned, prayed, attempting to achieve the impossible, a viable agricultural system on a landscape as inviting as the moon. At seven the workers stopped for a ten-minute breakfast of rice soup, then they pushed on till noon. Again they rested, rested not the traditional Cambodian siesta, 12 to 4, but broke for an hour. The rains were coming. The new people were coming. They worked through the heat of the afternoon and into the dusk. Again they rested, again for but an hour. Then by the light of bonfires built of new-cut jungle they pushed on until eleven, even midnight.
“It must be done. It must be done. We must finish,” Met Vong pressed Chhuon. “When the dikes are complete the people can rest.”
“They’ll be too tired to plant.”
“New people can plant.”
“Will they? Will they bring enough food to last until harvest?”
“Make the rice grow quickly. Angkar holds you responsible.” Chhuon’s hut was still the one-man cocoon he’d rewoven after Sok’s death in December 1973. He had made several improvements. Heavy branches in the platform had been replaced with hollow bamboo making the cocoon lighter, more easily moved. Both ends could now be opened to catch the slightest breeze, or closed for total privacy. In the walls were open pockets for his few belongings and the hidden pocket for his notebooks. At midnight, a week after the first city dwellers arrived, he wearily crawled through the hatch, closed it, lay his head on a flimsy straw pad and became the chrysalis of a future free man. He listened carefully. Would a chrops crawl under the platform tonight? For the informer who caught him, anyone with a notebook, Chhuon knew, it would mean extra rice or a day’s rest. In hunger, Chhuon also knew, people would do anything. He listened. He’d laid a few dried leaves beneath the platform. With it low to the ground it would be difficult for a chrops to trick him. Chhuon smiled. Very slowly he raised one hand. He let his fingers find the side pocket, let two split the banana leaf and snip to find the book. Slowly he removed it. Now he rolled noisily, hacked, resettled as if asleep. The smoke from bonfires hung on the ground amid the small huts and the one neary dorm. All about people coughed. He coughed himself into position to scribble a few notes.
The hysterical know-nothingness of the enforcer, and thus of Angkar, is beyond description. All knowledge of cultivation is subordinate to Angkar’s will. Yet one can live in a draconian land, only if one follows the rules. Now we are Democratic Kampuchea. The rains come. New people come. Gone is the proper rhythm of life, the rhythm of rice. Gone is Khum 4, replaced by Sangkat 4. To earn merit by showing compassion is prohibited. Tonight I shall guide Mir and his family to the path to the border. I pray they find safety.
For a week they came. For a month. For two months. At first a trickle. Then a flow. Then a constant plodding procession. By July they numbered ten thousand. They had no food, few possessions. They were more battered, more emaciated than the residents of Phum Sath Din had been two and a half years earlier. New People. City dwellers. Four of five were women or small children.
This is your beautiful new village, Angkar says. If you close your eyes you can see it. Now build what you see. Build a hut. Tomorrow you will plant rice, weed rice, transplant rice. Make it grow quickly or you will starve. There’s not enough paddy. Dig, build. The rains have been kind. The Old People have been kind. During the littler dry season you shall increase the paddy tenfold. It is the will of Angkar. Work harder. The energy of the peasant is a hundredfold that which he knows. Tonight there will be a meeting to reflect upon our lives and our great fortune. Tonight there will be a meeting to learn from our work experience. Do not fall asleep or you will be disappeared. New People are prohibited from speaking to Old People. Angkar will use you as fertilizer. Boys are prohibited from talking to girls. Do not sit near one another. You will be invited to visit the forest. Enemies will be eliminated. Anyone attempting escape is an enemy. You cannot leave.
The commune of the New People was established on the hard laterite upheavals beyond the Old People’s massive paddy. Quietly, covertly, communication between the groups, was established. Chhuon and others tried to help, tried to advise. He felt overwhelmed. Those new wards of Sangkat 4 most likely to be identified by Angkar as ex-Lon Nol lackeys needed to be spirited onto the forest paths to the Thai border. But to be caught assisting meant immediate death. To be suspect of compassion could mean disappearance.
“are you poh?”
“voen?”
“who are you?”
“voen!” Chhuon grasped his sister’s hands. She pulled them back. Scabs broke. The thin fingers bled, “i am brother.”
“brother is forbidden, eh?”
“no. your brother, chhuon.”
Voen stared at the dark face in the dark jungle. She reached to touch it. Hesitated. Then reached, touched. Chhuon trembled. They had not seen each other since Vathana’s wedding. Tears flooded her eyes, “is...is meh with you?” She used the rural word for “mom.”
Chhuon dropped his head, “i buried her three years ago now.”
“sok?”
“she i buried two dry seasons past.”
“samay? sakhon?”
“i don’t know, there was word that kdeb is not dead but with some resistance.”
“samnang?!”
“i don’t know if it’s true, have you seen vathana? is she with you? is her child well?”
“there are three, three grandchildren for you.”
“three!” Joy burst immediately on Chhuon’s weathered face. “where?”
“i don’t know, her city fell very early.” Chhuon’s heart dropped. “we need food,” Voen whispered, “please, brother, tell us where to get rice.”
“i don’t know, i’ll get some.”
For an hour they talked. Voen related the horrors of the evacuation and march from Phnom Penh, the deaths she’d seen, the families separated, the march up the Northern Corridor past ghost cities, past rubble heaps, through the stink of rotting meat. Then time became critical and they fled to their respective huts. Twice more they met. The first time Voen brought a high-level functionary for Chhuon’s underground roadway out. Chhuon brought two kilos of rice, enough to supplement her food ration for several weeks. The second time Chhuon brought all his notebooks but the original with the story of Plei Srepok. It was September. Norodom Sihanouk had returned to Phnom Penh. Rains were driving and continuous. The huge dikes were eroding, collapsing. Ten thousand hands could not plug the spillways ripping through everywhere. Seedlings and
plants were sucked from their loose hold and washed through with the torrential current. Hundreds of workers were being bludgeoned to death for being lax. Their bodies were thrown in the gaps but floated with the rising waters and at best clogged the few transfer ditches and forced them, too, to collapse.
“there will be no food next year, the crop is gone.”
“yes.”
“can we escape?”
“i will take you.”
“you will come, you are my brother.”
“no. when i die i will die on this land, i am cambodia...”
“i too am khmer. we’ll stay, we’ll send others.”
“a little resistance, it feeds the soul, eh?”
“aah.”
“take these, there are chrops at my hut every night, hide them, someday the story must be told. I Am Cambodia...”
A week later Chhuon was taken from his cocoon. Vong was furious. “Angkar,” Vong ranted, “holds Poh responsible for this failure. Angkar demands that conspirators expose their networks. Met Khieng, too, has confessed. Both of you are sent up to Site 169.”
Nang squatted. About him a tribe of five- and six-year-olds sat, rapt, their eyes glued to his every gesture, their ears to his every word. “He was called Kambu,” Nang said softly. “He was my father. He is yours. He is the father of all Khmers. From him came Kambuja.” Nang shifted. His mind was not on his speech but on the unsolved problem. He had bathed, manicured his seven fingers, dressed in an immaculate light-gray uniform with a red-checked krama folded neatly and hung about his neck. Nang looked beyond the children, his children. Each had been separated from his or her parents by force or by the deaths of the parents. Each had been starving up to the moment they’d been taken in by Nang. To them he was not an ugly and scarred nineteen-year-old security controller but a substitute parent, family, a provider, a hero. Nang spoke softly. His eyes were consoling, gentle, lusterless, as if a matte finish had somehow been impressed upon the surface. From his eyes the most astute child concluded he was unassuming, sincere. Amongst themselves they called him Kindly Uncle Nang.
Nang’s eyes fell back on the children. They too were spotless. Amid the filth which had exploded upon the land, amid the encroaching jungle, Nang’s house was light, on clear days ablaze with sunshine reflecting off polished bamboo surfaces and confiscated rosewood furniture. The house sat alone in a small jungle clearing a kilometer north of the nearest commune perimeter, several kilometers east of the cliffs. From early morning to midafternoon sunbeams splashed on the veranda, swarmed through doors and windows. Then the shadow of the cliffs blanketed the house in premature dusk. Nang smiled a wisp of a smile. “From Kambuja came Angkar. Now you are all comrade children of Angkar. In Angkar we shall take the great leap forward. If others hesitate, we’ll drag them with us.”
The children loved Nang. They loved his gentle manner, his soft voice, his wonderful words. They loved his home, their home, the largest and best any had ever seen—a villa in thatch and bamboo. That they were totally surrounded by minefields meant nothing other than that they could not play or school beyond the yard.
Nang loved the children. He loved their potential. He loved their openness. To him they were a sounding board, an awestruck audience, an experiment in “the scientific application of security measures,” his future army.
“The old society was very bad,” Nang said. “Corrupt. Full of senseless values which made everyone slaves. On Glorious 17 April when the Americans fled in shame, we began anew. Every vestige of old Cambodia has been eliminated. Now it is year zero. Now we shall create a new Kampuchea in which Khmer purity will reign, a Kampuchea which will ensure the continuance of the Khmer race for the next thousand years.
“For us, comrade children, all things are possible. Only Khmers have overthrown the feudal regime and the capitalist warmongers. Only we have established true independence and national sovereignty.” The children nodded, pleased in their importance.
“Now you must study the teachings of Pol Pot,” Nang said. “Met Nem will help. All must learn to read and to count. Learn to construct yourselves in the proper mold. Someday, like me, you will be masters of the waters and of the land.”
An hour later Nang said, “Have you identified any new children for me?” He stood with Met Ku, his site assistant, in a high observation tower at one corner of Site A-26.
“Yes. Several.” Ku was not enthusiastic. “Also, a new spy.”
“Bring the children to my home.” Nang raised the binoculars and scanned below. “They’ll become our eyes where our eyes cannot see,” he said.
Below them perfectly ordered huts stretched in two facing parallel lines. Between the rows was an unsided, roofed pavilion used for dining and nightly meetings. “They’ll become our ears where our ears cannot hear,” Nang continued. Beyond the huts perfectly ordered, seemingly perfectly irrigated paddies glowed a verdant iridescence. “In a year they’ll train others.”
“I don’t see the need,” Ku said. “We have the security force, and those children”—he gestured to the paddy—“spy for us. They come, they say, ‘Mama speaks French.’ They eat. Mama is disappeared.”
“These all will be disappeared,” Nang said softly. “They are the bourgeois of Kompong Chhnang. Undesirables.”
“Then...”
“They’ll spy in the sangkats, not the sites,” Nang said. “The Chinese botched their revolution because they didn’t attack all the foundations of culture. Children must be weaned from adults at two. Doors must be eliminated. We shall be the first people in history to achieve a pure communist society without time frittered on intermediate steps.”
Again Nang raised the binoculars. From the tower he could see four of his isolated subsites. All were to his design—his contribution to Angkar. Instead of the massive communes of the controllers or chiefs he had established a network of more than twenty camps—not one larger than four hundred people—each isolated by mined jungle, each totally controlled by a permanent cadre, each containing a homogeneous group to be eliminated. Site A-26 now held middle-class Khmer families from Kompong Chhnang; B-26 ethnic Chinese from the Kompong Thom area; C-26 Chams; D-26 Mountaineers, and on and on. Surviving FANK officers with families were grouped together; those without families were housed at another site. Ethnic Viet Namese were clustered at the most remote subsite so as not to infect the air and pass their diseases. Small prisons had been hidden amid the camps. At night screams from the dark terrorized the peasants.
Nang’s mouth broadened in a flat look of disdain as he observed his workers. The contortion forced the shrapnel scar and the napalm scar into ugly wrinkles. “They are the past,” he said to Ku. “Until the rice is in, until we create a better system, let them believe. Let them tend rice.” Nang’s face creased deeper. His eyes glittered. “Reeducate them.”
As the complex of Site 169 and the northern sangkats and sroks had burgeoned with the deluge of evacuees from Phnom Penh and much of northern Cambodia, Nang had realized platform elimination was too inefficient. It could not keep up with demand. Enemies were many, loyal cadre few. In June he’d had groups brought to the largest craters he could find. He let his yotheas shoot them, but ammunition was scarce and the method proved too costly. In July and August he’d scouted the wilderness for areas in which to dispose of bodies. With each find he’d directed a group be brought out and bludgeoned to death. The method was slow. The yotheas became bored. Worse, it gave useless elements time to react. Always one or two attempted escape and time was wasted in hunting them down, dragging them back to their group and finally bashing in their skulls.
At Site 169 emptied camps were reoccupied by a second wave of refugees who moved into established huts and tended established fields. These people came from the hard life in the sangkats. Nang imagined them in his camps eating better, receiving better treatment. He worked them hard yet he was certain they were not being pushed to their limit. “They become lax,” he told Ku. “Lax, they’re easier to control. They
write longer biographies.”
Still the camps refilled faster than they could be emptied. New sites were constructed as controllers sent more and more traitors, agents and spies. After the first wave of eliminations, a record center was established. Biographies were referenced, cross-referenced and analyzed. Seditious networks were unmasked. More and more people were arrested.
“What’s your estimate of per-hectare production?” Nang asked Ku.
“Three, four tons from the best paddies,” Ku said. In reality his estimate was a tenfold exaggeration. “The people are proud of their work.”
“Good. From the poorest?”
“One point four if you don’t count the yuons. They’re terrible workers.”
“This will be a very big crop.” Nang’s mind was not on rice. He babbled yet his concentration was scattered. The unsolved problem vexed him. How? How to make it more efficient? He was running out of space. Criticism from the Center was rising. His biweekly death reports were not reaching expectations. “Next year,” he muttered to Ku, “we double or triple crop.”
“What is there to criticize, Met Vannah?” The brashness of the young woman’s question was caustic to the cadreman’s ears yet he did not correct her. The reeducation session was an hour old. The workers and peasants were tired. How many times did they need to hear the rantings against the three mountains of old power—the imperialists, the feudalists, the comprador capitalists? How many times did they need to be told that work was their sacred right? “Met Vannah,” the young woman continued, “we have struggled in the paddies. We have vigorously attacked our labor. I managed a farm for my uncle under the old regime. This,” she lied, “is the most wonderful crop I’ve seen.”
“Yes. For me too. Ah...ah...”
“Bona.”
“Yes, Met Bona. For me too. Thanks to Angkar the rice grows quickly, eh.”
Bona talked on. Met Vannah agreed. Topics changed. Met Vannah explained how the state now owned all property, how individual rights were subservient to the rights of the state. He told the meeting that Angkar had ordered the national construction effort to be rapidly carried forth. Then he noted the most serious problems. “Angkar has been informed of heinous crimes committed in its name during the evacuations. These atrocities were inflicted not by Angkar but by enemy agents disguised as yotheas. The CIA wishes to discredit Democratic Kampuchea.
For the Sake of All Living Things Page 89