For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  The Viet Namese wish hegemony over Kampuchea. Work hard. Learn from Angkar. When the yuon threat is neutralized you will be returned to your homes. You will be addressed by Norodom Sihanouk. But first, the Viet Namese sickness must be eradicated. Work hard.”

  Again Bona stood. “If we are allowed more sleep, Met Vannah,” she said, “we will have more energy to work.”

  Vannah laughed. “Yes, you’re correct. All shall sleep now. You are dismissed. Ah, Met Bona...”

  “Yes?”

  “You are a manager, eh?”

  “Yes. Well...I helped.”

  “Do you wish to be invited to help the planner?”

  “Out of the paddies?! Oh, yes!”

  “Then tomorrow you should pack a small bag. I’ll have you transferred to Met Nang’s office where paddies are mapped and fertilizer needs established.”

  Bona first was led past ancient ruins. The guide forced her to stop and observe the bas-relief—a three-tiered sculpture where those at the top, plump with much merit, awaited reincarnation to better lives and those at the base, chained, with concave starving bellies, being beaten or lifted by the ankles, swung and smashed to the earth, expected to return as rodents or dogs.

  “How far we have come, eh, Comrade Sister?” The young soldier snickered.

  All day she waited for her assignment. By sunset she’d completed her biography; at midnight Nang arrived; at two she was brought to his chamber and left. She had been well treated yet she was afraid. Nang closed the door. Outside latches clacked. Nang slid the inner bolt. Then he picked up a switch. Bona tried to be brave, tried not to show the fear which had seized her. It was incomprehensible that this impeccably dressed scarred man her own age would truly harm her. She was to assist a planner. She’d done nothing wrong.

  “You’re very beautiful,” Nang whispered. His voice was thick. Bona dropped her eyes respectfully. “You are not allowed to cry loudly,” he said.

  “To cry?” She forced the words.

  Nang’s hand flicked and the switch slapped her cheek. Immediately a welt raised. She didn’t cry.

  “Tell me the names of your contacts.” Nang’s eyes began to glaze.

  “Contacts?” Bona was bewildered.

  “Your American boss.”

  “What American boss...” Again the switch flicked, caught her neck. She backed to the wall.

  “You’re a spy. Do you work for Americans or yuons?”

  “I don’t work for anyone,” Bona blurted.

  Nang feigned a flick of the switch. Bona cringed, her arms snapped to cover her face. Then she lowered them. Instantaneously Nang stepped, whirled, smashed her face with a powerful kick. Her nose broke. Blood splattered, her head smacked the wall behind her. She collapsed.

  Nang unlatched the door. From outside bolts clattered. The door opened. Two large boys entered. Both were dressed in rough black uniforms. Harshly, Nang said to Bona, “Your biography says you were a functionary for the old regime. Must I turn you over to Angkar’s loyal men or will you tell me all?”

  Bona wiped blood from her mouth. It smeared on her face and hand. Though there were now three men she felt more secure, as if none would assault her before the others. “I was not a ‘functionary.’ My father’s oldest brother had a small plot. I helped with the rice.”

  “Angkar Leou”—Nang was in full control—“prohibits one to use words to hide the truth.”

  “This is the truth.”

  The switch snapped. It caught her eye. As she stumbled a yothea snatched her shirt at the shoulder. Violently he jerked her from the wall, flipped her toward Nang as if she were a rag doll, his hand clutching the shirt, the cloth shredding.

  Nang grabbed her, held her, kept her from falling. Then his hands flew, clutching her tattered clothes, ripping downwards, exposing her breasts, throwing her to her knees. All three men laughed. “Hang her there.” Nang indicated steel cuffs attached to the wall just above shoulder height.

  “No,” Bona screamed. “I’ll...I’ll tell you anything.”

  The yotheas laughed loudly as they grasped her, each grabbing one thin wrist and pulling her arms apart, displaying her chest to Nang who chuckled appreciatively. Then they hung her and left.

  Again Nang latched the inner bolt. “Answer immediately.” Though quiet, Nang’s voice was severe. “Do not waste time reflecting. Do not fabricate lies.” Nang grabbed the waistband of her skirt, ripped the material, pulled down. “Who is your boss?”

  “An American...?” The answer came quick, firm, but ended in a question.

  “How do you contact him?” Nang rubbed the stubs of his cleaved fingers hard against Bona’s vulva. She raised a knee to protect herself. Nang jabbed the quadriceps with one finger with such force that the muscle danced in spasm. Bona shuddered in pain, in fear, in loss of response. How could she tell him about a contact procedure which she’d never known? “How do you...” Nang screamed his righteous questions as he rammed his hand into her. Bona tried to think. Stuttered grunts dribbled from her mouth. Nang laughed uproariously. “You like it.” Bona didn’t answer. Nang pulled back, angry. He cocked the arm of his broken hand. “Where?” he screamed.

  “At the cliff,” she blurted. “At the base, near the border.”

  Nang smashed her mouth, shattering teeth. “I should throw you from the cliff,” Nang screamed. He punched her chest trying to flatten Bona’s breasts. Ribs broke. Nang punched wildly. The breasts sank into her lifeless torso.

  For a month Nang searched for Bona’s contact site at the base of the cliffs near the Thai border. For a month he had ambush teams lying in wait for the American. Every person from Bona’s camp was interrogated, beaten. A hundred were chap teuv bat, taken away never to be seen again.

  “Met Ku.” Nang was frantic. “The enemy comes, to the base of the cliffs. He must be caught. The Center must never know.”

  In order to solidify his position, Nang now took drastic measures. He directed Ku, Met Am and Met Ro, his three most faithful underlings, to develop within each camp a core of unquestioning, second-level spies and police who could be used to carry out Nang’s policies, whims and will.

  His paranoia grew with each report of treachery. “Ku”—Nang banged his claw into his left palm—“we need a larger detention center for the POWs.” Nang’s eyes leaped from wall to wall. “I know,” he whispered, pulling Ku close, “I know exactly where and how it’s to be built.”

  Nang envisioned the new system. Within a year, he saw, he would not only have his own private security minions, his children spies and his secret police force to supplement the regional and national forces, but also three small, roving, gestapo-type platoons which would spy on the children, the minions, the police, the regional and national forces, on one another and on themselves. And all would feed a new facility. The slightest gesture, by anyone, could be interpreted as anti-Krahom, anti-Angkar, or anti-Met Nang. Immediately, he saw, he would be able to move to isolate any threat. That this might lead to the highest level of executions in any district of Democratic Kampuchea, he knew, would be a feather in his cap.

  In November, when the main harvest was to be reaped, camps on subsites D-26, D-134, D-143 and A-39 had so few able-bodied people that Nang “sold” the unharvested fields to the director of Sector 4 of the northwest region who marched two thousand workers ninety kilometers in seven days. The harvest had been scant. Some rice had rotted, some was destroyed by late-season winds, some died in dry paddies because of faulty irrigation. When the harvest was in, Nang’s pay was a mere twelve metric tons. All his rice and that of the director from Sector 4 was shipped to the Center’s central collection point for further shipment to China. “They did not harvest the crop,” Nang later said of the remaining inhabitants of those camps. “How could they expect to eat it?” The Sector 4 director was equally compassionate. “My people have simply and graciously contributed a few days to harvest the rice of an ill neighbor. In Angkar’s eyes they have earned much praise and honor.”
/>   Nang scowled. Construction was behind schedule. In his mind he questioned Met Arn’s loyalty. Openly he questioned Met Ro. Ro disappeared.

  “Why is it so difficult to string a wire from here to there?” Nang demanded of Arn.

  “The wire breaks with the weight of the fixture,” Arn said. Quickly he added, “We’ve secured thicker cables. They’re being joined and...”

  Nang stamped out. In mid-October the Center had issued the following order: “Angkar Leou no longer requires prisoners of war. Local chiefs and controllers shall dispose of them. This is the wish of Angkar Leou.” Nang walked to the railing of the new observation platform. It was a tree house in the upper limbs of the highest tree surrounded by other trees, a small box house built under the branches so as to be undetectable from above. To one side, down a four-hundred-foot cliff, was the new main detention facility and all of Democratic Kampuchea; to the other side was a broad ledge and then the fifteen-hundred-foot rising escarpment to the Thai border. Directly in front, the lower cliff curved to make a horseshoe-falls bowl. Beneath the vegetation of the ledge were a hundred small concrete-block cells—only a fraction completed and occupied. Nang stared across the horseshoe gap. He clenched his teeth, furrowed his nose. Already there was odor coming from the cells. How he hated those creatures. The cells were one and a half by two meters, by one and a quarter meters high. In each were a dozen or more squirming, disheveled, cowering, pathetic people. He saw them as his plight, his guilt, his banishment to the border. Without them his nation would never have suffered so. It was their fault, he told himself. They’re to blame. Had they not been corrupt, had they been pure, never would Kampuchea have needed what Nang had now become. Had they been strong, he told himself, he would never have been reduced to being an eliminator. I am a soldier. No, “am” is not right. Being a yothea is honorable. Being a babysitter for this scum...being a trash disposer...He wanted to beat them for what he’d become. He wanted them vanished so no memory existed. He wanted...

  “Ah...Met Nang.” Met Ku topped the ladder. “There’s a new ward in Camp E-26.”

  Nang glared at his assistant. Idiots, he thought. They are all idiots. “In every camp, every day, there are new wards.” His face was blank.

  “This one is very odd,” Ku said. Nang’s face remained empty. “He walked in carrying a cocoon on his back.”

  They found her unconscious with a small child rooted into the nest created by her curled body. She was wet, cool from exposure to the rains. Her breathing was shallow, almost imperceptible. The two men didn’t speak. They had observed her for several hours without ever seeing the child. How she had gotten there, who she was, they did not know. One man had been living in the forest for more than three years, moving constantly, eating jungle fare—berries, leaves, roots—the other had been with him for two months. Between them they had seen much suffering and death along the back roads of South Viet Nam and Cambodia, had become yet more cautious, more patient. She might be bait, they’d thought. A trap. She was probably dead. Hours mattered little. Before they approached they scouted the road in both directions, scouted the forest deep to each side. Still they waited. Then quietly they approached. Slowly they prodded her with a long branch. Her head and torso fell back exposing the child who squirmed, shivered and faintly sobbed. They bent over her and the child, touched her to see if she were alive. One of them, the man without a left arm, cradled and lifted the child. The krama wrapped about the child’s head fell back. In the dank grayness red hair shone. Shocked, the men’s eyes met. They did not talk. The second man lifted the mother. He struggled. He heaved her up as he dropped to one knee. She collapsed over his shoulder. Then, seemingly from nowhere, exploding in the silence like a well-laid ambush, “Bah! Bah-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!” Then bam! A small hard boy-child slammed like a locomotive into the man trying to lift his mother, splaying all three into the mud-dirt road.

  “Bah! Ba! Bababa!” Samnang’s gibber blasted, then tailed off in confusion. Then the boy leaped up, grabbed the man holding Su Livanh, kicked him, wrenched the girl from his arm.

  “No hurt. No hurt.” The man tried to calm the boy. His Khmer was broken.

  “Bah! Ba! Ba-bababa!” The boy’s eyes flashed.

  “Ssshh!” The second man grabbed him. Samnang spun, swung his fists wildly, tried kicking. The man grabbed him firmly, turned him to face away, then squeezed him until he was unable to thrash, “ssshh! we’re friends, let us help you. and her. she’s very ill. divine buddha, he order us to help.”

  For an hour they followed ever-branching trails deeper and deeper into the forest. The trails became narrower, the vegetation lower. Samnang, suspicious, followed the man with his mother who walked behind the one-armed one with Su Livanh. They came to a stream. The trail ended. The water was dark, smooth. The men changed positions, stepped to the shallow edge at the bank, waded upstream. Occasionally the one-armed one turned to see if the boy still followed. After twenty minutes they came upon a small, V-shaped bamboo footbridge suspended from braided vines. The entire trek had been silent. Now, Samnang, afraid of the bridge, began a low monosyllabic babble. The one-armed man crossed with Su Livanh. Samnang’s stammering became louder. The second man looked blankly at him. With Vathana over his shoulder he stepped onto the bridge. Samnang backed away, his “ba-ba” turning into a wheezing moan. The man backed off the bridge. He motioned the boy to him. “you ba-ba, eh? i am kpa. i am your friend, divine buddha say i am your friend.”

  The camp was tiny. A single hut with walls of vertical branches placed side to side and a roof of palm fronds. Inside there was a single bamboo platform. On it a third man lay wrapped in a quilt, shivering. Still without speaking the men laid Vathana and Su Livanh on the platform. Then they built a small fire. From a clay jar they produced rice, from a second a shriveled smoked bat. Soon they had hot bowls of rice and bat soup. Kpa offered his to Samnang. The boy hesitated. Slowly he accepted the bowl. Then he lunged at the food, sucking and slurping the gruel, then loudly licking the wooden bowl trying to lap the lingering flavor from the wooden pores. Kpa and the one-armed man ate calmly. They fed the man coming out of his malarial tremor, then Su Livanh.

  Vathana, though still subconscious, sensed the loss of Su Livanh’s warmth. Her body curled tighter in a fetal squeeze. A slight gasp escaped her lips.

  “mama,” Su Livanh whispered.

  “You can talk, eh?” Kpa said quietly. Su Livanh stared at the red-brown man. She tried to squirm back into her mother’s nest. “Don’t be afraid.” Kpa squatted by the edge of the platform, gently extended a hand and rubbed the back of Su Livanh’s arm. “What’s your name?” Su Livanh dug her heels in and pushed harder against Vathana. Vathana’s curl eased. Again she gasped. “Bring some water,” Kpa said to the other man.

  “ba, ba ba ba.” Samnang sat on the platform beside his sister.

  “Ba ba,” Kpa said gently. “Who is this?” He tapped Su Livanh.

  Su Livanh looked at the man squatting before her. “Su Livanh,” she answered in a sweet little-girl voice. “We went to see Grandpa Cahuom but he was gone.”

  “Cahuom? Cahuom Chhuon?”

  “Grandpa.” Su Livanh shuddered and again squirmed against her mother.

  “my baby,” Vathana mumbled in delirium, “samol.” Her voice was very weak.

  For weeks Kpa and the other two men nursed Vathana, fed and sheltered the children. They spoke little, almost no words at all, a habit they’d fallen into in their hiding. The children responded well but Vathana remained weak and withdrawn. She refused to eat. Slowly the men forced her to swallow, first just water, then soup, then rice; a little more each day. All day, all night, when conscious, she cried though she had no tears. The man with malaria spoke softly to her. She remained withdrawn. He sang childhood songs to her. She was impassive. When she slipped into subconsciousness she moaned for Samol.

  “Who is Samol?” the malarial man asked Su Livanh.

  “My sister,” the little girl answered, using the f
orm meaning elder sister.

  “Where is she?”

  “The witch ate her. Mama says the blind witch ate her.”

  More weeks passed. Then came the little dry season. Heat and humidity were intolerable. Then the clouds broke with fierce monsoon rains. Vathana sat up. She hung her legs off the platform, placed her feet on the ground. Slowly she rocked to and fro humming the tune to a childhood song, rhythmically rocking, staring at the steady dripping from the palm-frond eave, staring as if her eye sockets were empty, her mind disgorged.

  “You are my niece,” said the man who suffered from malaria. “I sang that song to you when you were your daughter’s age.” Vathana stopped humming, stopped rocking. She leaned against the man. He put his arm around her, rocked gently, hummed. He fell silent. Then he said, “I wanted them all to stay. We were a strong force but when the village was liberated they rushed to join the new force. Some were marched west with the villagers. We found most of them in a grave on the trail to Phum Sath Nan. How I wanted to see your father. And your mother and Aunt Sita—your grandmother. I would have given up the resistance but Kpa knew. He saw into their hearts. Still we can’t stay much longer. When the rains stop and all the people and their yotheas are consumed with the harvest, then we’ll go out. Then we’ll go to Thailand.”

  The rains continued to intensify throughout September. Foraging became more difficult. Food stores disappeared. Samnang roamed far and wide, alone. He alone seemed to thrive. Sam’s recurring bouts with malaria weakened him and he spent the time between bouts fearing the next onset. Su Livanh, though she ate as much as the others, became more and more lethargic. Under her flesh she seemed to be melting away. Nothing she did caught her mother’s attention.