The brotherhood of suffering is a bond, power is a drug.
—Theodore H. White,
China After The War
THE NIGHT WAS DARK. Samnang’s lips were cut. Dry. His throat rasped. He coughed dryly. The pain in his arms and shoulders would not subside, would not dull. His hands pulsed numb, tingled on the stretched surface. The soldiers had wired his elbows tightly together before the march from Plei Srepok. In the blackness he could hear voices, mostly Viet Namese, some Khmer. He tried to hear, to concentrate on the voices, to listen so as to forget his lips and throat and arms. He tried to force himself to lie on the ground without moving and listen but each moment he lay still his mind shot to his shoulders, elbows, to the pain, to the terror. He did not yet question why they had taken him, why they had not killed him, what they were going to do with him. The terror was numbing. He shook violently yet was hardly aware of his tremors. He did not realize or understand the magnitude of the scene carved onto his mind.
He moved. The noise of his motion masked the voices and he missed part of what was said. It did not matter. From the Khmer he ascertained the men were bartering over something. The Khmer man spoke with the sarcastic formality of an educated city dweller. Samnang laughed to himself, amused, realizing the Viet Namese soldiers didn’t know, couldn’t understand, the sarcasm, the antagonism held in the Khmer idioms the man used graciously.
The pain grabbed him, he fidgeted, the noise again blotted out the voices. He took a deep breath, held it, counted to four and let it out.
“Nuoc?” a guard asked him.
He stared into the blackness. There was nothing there. Again the guard asked, “Nuoc?”
Samnang cleared his parched throat. He tried to speak but no sound came. He licked his lips. His tongue was dry. He could taste the faint saltiness of blood. The soldier clicked on a flashlight and poked the beam into his eyes. “Nuoc!” The light was blinding. The soldier held a canteen cup in the beam. Samnang nodded and the soldier gently allowed him to drink. Then he turned the light off and left.
As his eyes readjusted Samnang looked to see if Y Bhur was near. He could not tell. The Khmer man who had been bartering with the Viet Namese left. From somewhere in the darkness came a staccato female radio voice. He picked out the words “Radio Hanoi.” The radio seemed nearby, perhaps less than ten meters. The broadcast was sad, soulful songs. Samnang rolled. He rolled gingerly, afraid of hurting his hands. His hands no longer felt like overfilled balloons. There was no feeling at all. Now his chest screamed. The radio noise was soothing, giving him something on which to focus but his mind couldn’t hold it in his body’s agitation. He rolled again. Images of the night flashed subliminally in his mind, yet again, in the agitation caused by pain, he couldn’t hold a single image, not of Y Ksar, not of Sraang, not of Yani, not of the tremendous conflagration and its sucking wind.
Several Viet Namese soldiers began arguing. He recognized the voice of the political officer, understood a few phrases, did not understand the context of the argument. Then he heard the voice of Bok Roh. Samnang’s body went rigid. Urine squirted into the loincloth he still wore. Without emotion the giant told the Viet Namese, in Jarai, he wanted to keep the Jarai and sell the Khmer. Again there was argument in Viet Namese. Samnang tried to pray but his teeth chattered so violently he could not.
The camp was quiet. Not because the soldiers were practicing noise discipline, in the sanctuary area it wasn’t necessary, but simply because most were asleep. A rustling noise came from below, approaching. Samnang rolled. A group of men with flashlights came toward him. He could not make out how many or who. When they reached him one guard passed a beam up and down his body and face. Samnang turned away, jammed a heel against the earth, breathed hard. He began to whimper. A guard said something and a second soldier rolled the boy and loosened the wire at his elbows. Immediately relief swept him from head to foot. His shoulders and chest, which were near spasm, relaxed. His hands pulsed, ached. In a moment they felt cold and hot, clammy, partially numb, stiff, flashed hot. After no feeling, the sensation was wonderful, terrible. He did not notice when guards deposited Y Bhur beside him. He slipped into a drowsy haze, not sleep, not consciousness, a protective limbo in which his mind blocked the horror.
Again the Khmer man was talking with the Viet Namese officer. Samnang did not know how long it was from the time the guard had eased the pain by loosening his bonds but the forest was still dark. Perhaps it was minutes, perhaps hours. He didn’t think about time. The man was speaking in more pleasant tones and phrases. Or perhaps, Samnang thought, he was still dozing. Dreaming. “Then it is decided,” the Khmer man said. “We will have that one also. You’ll keep the rice and we’ll see that the supplies which have reached Kratie continue unimpeded.”
“The other speaks Khmer and Jarai,” he thought he heard the Viet Namese political officer say. “I would keep him but just now we’re moving too quickly.”
“He would never serve you,” the Khmer said. “Not after seeing you eliminate his people. You’d have to kill him sooner or later.”
“Still,” the Viet officer said, “a sly boy like that could be made an asset.”
Thus did Cahuom Samnang become a conscript of the Khmer Krahom.
For three nights and three days he marched in file behind a boy younger than he. The column avoided main roads and paths, using animal trails and, in the few populated areas they traversed, the smallest dikes. For three days he was kept trussed. The pain in his arms, shoulders and chest came and went according to the tightness of the bonding wires. The tightness was related to how well he followed orders. When he spoke to Y Bhur who limped behind him his bonds were tightened. When the pain caused him to cry to the boy before him the bonds were tightened again. When he stumbled, walking the hill trails without being able to use his arms to counterbalance his gait, the wires were raised and tightened until his upper arms were drawn together, his elbows crossed, his lower arms and hands flapping behind like dead wings.
They paused often. Each time a guard came, separated him and Y Bhur, and loosened the wires. “Have some tea,” the guard would say. “We’ll be there shortly. Eat rice. What was your village? Ah! Tell me later. We must move again.”
At the next pause the same black-clad guard came and loosened the wires that had been tightened again by his comrades during the move. “I would like to be your friend,” the guard said in Khmer. He spoke well, yet in a rural dialect which Samnang could not place. “I’m Met Hon,” the guard said. “You are Met Nang.”
“I’m called Cahuom Samnang.” Samnang was bewildered, frightened, yet so exhausted, so surrounded by alien behavior, he could barely react beyond numbness.
“No,” the guard said. “Met Nang. Comrade Nang. We are all comrades in the Movement. Look about. There is only the Movement. There is no other past.”
Samnang looked forward, back, at the resting column. He saw nearly twenty guards, all young boys only slightly older than him. He looked at Hon. He didn’t wish to offend him by looking into his eyes but he had to see. Was Hon sincere? “What movement? Where are you taking me?”
“Ah. You’ll see, Met Nang,” Met Hon said. “Oh, I like that. Nang, ‘Lucky’; Comrade Lucky. When a coin falls, you shall always receive the head. There is a place where the rice grows, where you’ll learn to live without corruption, where all live in perfect self-reliance. That is the Movement.” Hon spoke simply. He neither smiled nor scowled. The words came from him as from a man in total tranquility. “Now, Met Nang, eat the rice the Movement has provided. It will nourish you for the journey ahead.”
“Older Brother...” Samnang began to address Hon with the formal appellation a young boy uses with an older male friend.
“No.” Hon snapped harshly. “Not ‘Older Brother.’ ‘Met.’ ‘Comrade.’ No ‘Older Brother,’ ‘Little Sister’ anymore. ‘Met.’ Now stand. We must go before an enemy discovers us.”
By the third night fatigue had pushed Samnang to a state of apathetic delirium. He barely knew when he was resting, when he was walking. Constantly he heard Met Hon address him in gentle yet unfamiliar terms. He began to think of himself as Met Nang, of Y Bhur as Met Ur, but his thoughts, like the questions where? and why? and the images of Plei Srepok, had not congealed but were like globules of fat floating in a hot chicken broth.
His feet were sore. He’d been barefoot since disrobing beneath Y Ksar’s longhouse. Behind him, always, was Y Bhur. They were not allowed to speak, nor was Samnang allowed to speak with the other conscripted boys or with other guards. His confusion increased. He did not, could not, think of Y Bhur except for the clump-drag limping noise made by Met Ur, who was wounded and probably crazy with fever.
Of himself? What? Thlak tuck chet. His heart could no longer speak to his mind. His desire to behave, to adhere to the Eightfold Path, to his belief in right thoughts, right mindfulness, right meditation, evaporated and dissipated like the mist following the last monsoon before the dry season.
That night they covered his eyes, packed him in a coffin full of soft dirt so he could not move, and they buried him. His only connection to the outside world was a thin reed through which he had to suck in air to keep from suffocating.
In dark early morning mist and rain Cahuom Chhuon stood on the steps of the decagonal pagoda in Phum Sath Din. It was the one hundredth day since the death of his father, the seventh day since the attack at Plei Srepok. No one had yet risen. Even the monks were asleep. Chhuon let the rain drench him, let it run from his shaved head, stream with the tears from his eyes, dribble diluted salt into and from his mouth. For three days he had wailed like an old woman. For three days he had sat perfectly quiet, perfectly still, breaking neither to eat nor to relieve himself. In the wet darkness he turned, faced north, then west, south and. east. Four directions, he thought. Four Noble Truths: hardship and suffering are elements of life; suffering is caused by the passion to possess that which has no permanence; suffering can be defeated by overpowering one’s passions; to control one’s passions one must strictly follow the Eightfold Path. He repeated to himself the second Truth. He repeated it again and again. He lay the Truth, as if a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle part, onto the image he held of the events of the past seven days, seventy days, forty-five years. Somehow it should fit, should fall in if turned just so, set at the exact angle which would allow the shape to mesh. He thought of his truck, his most prized possession, and he thought he would never again touch it. His desire to possess, yes, that was where it would fit, to possess goods which have no permanence, yes, not the goods themselves, but the desire for he himself to have them as if he were alone, an individual, apart from all others, yes, his passion for the glories Westernization was bestowing upon him, upon Phum Sath Din, upon all Cambodia...he wished he could explain it to Cheam...here was the pain, the passion which caused the pain...which...The anguish in his heart welled up in his throat and behind his eyes...I have yielded to my passion for worldly goods and for this the spirits have taken Kdeb. Have taken Yani. I am the source...Chhuon pulled the statuette from his soiled shirt. He squeezed it. He prayed to the spirit of his father. In midprayer his thought transformed to a prayer of homage to his father’s spirit on its hundredth day of liberation from its earthly vessel. Chhuon returned home.
Midday, two days after Chhuon had returned from Plei Srepok without his children, a FULRO messenger had arrived with word of the destruction of the Jarai village. K Drai, the messenger dispatched by Y Ksar to the airfield at Andaung Pech, had returned from the government post without reinforcements. From a position on the canyon’s escarpment he had witnessed the ceremonial trial and the slaughter. On foot he had raced through dense forest to a small Mountaineer outpost and from there the commander had sent word of the attack in every direction. Thus had Chhuon and all Phum Sath Din learned of the death of Samnang, Mayana and 317 Jarai villagers, and the conscription of two tribal boys.
When Chhuon returned to the wat he was washed, dressed, composed. Under his left arm he held a white satchel. Behind the pagoda, under the trees by the river, a score of village men milled in groups of two, three or four. Chhuon felt their eyes keep pace with his approach. He bowed his head, climbed the steps and entered the vestibule, removed his sandals, entered the main hall.
For several weeks village women had been preparing for the hundredth-day ceremony for the dead. When word of the children’s fate arrived, a rite for their spirits was added. Relatives and neighbors had cooked elaborate meals and now the bowls, dishes and platters covered three long tables. Sweet pungent smells of curried foods mixed with earthy odors of boiled greens and steaming mist from hot soups and rice. The scent of mint garnished the aromas. At the far end of the hall on the altar to Buddha the smoke from a hundred incense sticks rose and mixed with the fragrance of baskets of flowers. Young children darted behind groups of eating, chattering women, playing hide-and-seek and peekaboo with their cousins. The atmosphere was light, happy even in its solemnness, gay, the occasion bringing together nearly the entire village, bringing together, an extended loving family in their best and whitest clothing, taking them from fields and the confines of their homes to celebrate the journey of the spirits.
Chhuon approached the altar. To one side Vathana and Samay held their grieving mother. Chhuon knelt before the altar, said a prayer, advanced. He lit several joss sticks and stuck the ends into cans of rice to support them. From the carefully packed satchel he removed two red candles which he lit and placed on the altar so that Samnang’s and Mayana’s ghosts would be able to find their way home. In his heart he feared their ghosts would be disoriented and bewildered. Any ghost, in its first days, could have trouble adjusting to the state of death, and the ghost of a child violently killed far from home needed guidance lest it return to frighten or harm its own family.
Chhuon removed a lacquered wooden box containing the ashes of his father. Sok joined her husband. She brought a bowl of fresh fruit and sweet rice cakes. Chhuon eyed her as she arranged the fruit on the altar. He wished with all his heart he could find comfort in her presence, but he could not. He looked at Samay who now held Peou in his arms. Then he looked at Vathana. He could not but believe that they blamed him, as he did himself, for the death of the children. Sok retreated without a word.
Chhuon placed his father’s ashes on the altar. In this act there was joy. Though he was distraught over the children he was proud to be able to provide properly for his father. Then hopelessness seized him. He would never have the ashes of Samnang or Mayana. Never be able to place them at the altar of the village wat. Their spirits would never find peace and the path to rebirth. Behind him the room had filled.
“It’s their strategy,” Chhuon heard a male voice. Then another, “Eh? The yuons?” “The Communists,” the first answered. “If they rid the mountains of the tribals they have no opposition.” A third voice said authoritatively, “Ten thousand have been pushed from the land. Tens of thousands killed. They’re marching south. Why’d Chhuon go up there?” The second voice piped, “It’s one thing to kill himself, eh, but his own flesh?!”
Chhuon removed from his satchel a comb, shirt, pack of cigarettes and a small roll of twenty-riel notes and placed them with his father’s ashes. For Mayana he left a scarf which had been Vathana’s and which the younger daughter had always admired. In the scarf were pieces of cellophane-wrapped candy and a pack of gum. For Samnang there was a new pair of pants, a book of maps, two ballpoint pens and an order pad. Chhuon closed his eyes, stepped back, then stopped. He opened his eyes. He reached into his pocket. He had not planned the action but suddenly he felt he must. From his pocket he withdrew the wad of counterfeit fifty-riel notes. He stared at them in his hand. “For what possible reason,” Chhuon muttered, shaking, suddenly shaking violently, unable to control his arms or body, throwing the wad on the new pants, “could you possibly want these?”
“Brother,” Cheam said, “the monks have arrived. Come.” Cheam led Chhuon to their family mat where Vathana was again supporting her mother, where Samay and Sakhon knelt. All the food had vanished in deference to the monks who could not eat for six more hours. Maha Nyanananda climbed onto a raised pallet by the altar, sat, tucked his feet beneath him. Chhuon barely noticed. Then the saffron robe caught his eye. He looked up and tears welled. About the old monk were several assistants, the aacha, and several of the village leaders. Through Chhuon’s swollen eyes all his people in their best and whitest clothes looked gray, like apparitions. The apparitions brought their hands together and bowed their heads to the floor three times. The monotonic chanting in Pali reached his ears but did not enter his head. He knew the prayers but he could not utter a sound. An urge to rise swept over him but he forced it to pass through him and on. In its wake he yet wanted to rise, wanted to address his family, neighbors, wanted to explain why he had left the children, wanted to make them understand. The aacha sprayed perfume into a bowl of water, the monk dipped a white chrysanthemum. Maha Nyanananda flicked the flower toward the kneeling congregation and over the clothes and gifts, consecrating them for the dead. Later he would give them to the poor. The chanting continued for hours though the young children had long since departed and again were playing hide-and-seek in the vestibule and on the grounds about the pagoda. Chhuon forced himself to repeat the prayers, the suttas shielding his consciousness against the tragedies that had befallen his family, forced his eyes to close, to hide in blackness, forced his body into a state of numbed trance. Again and again his mind escaped from the prayers to think, first, if it is not the fate of a person to remain with the living then this must be accepted. Then with great anxiety, to think of the Samsara, the Wheel of Life, which connects all generations, and to project the ramifications of his deed, his loss, his unheeded dream.
In the first days that followed, Chhuon appeared calm. After the days of wailing and the days of silence the sudden change was welcomed as a sign of moderation of his grief. But within days his wife, his brother, all the villagers, again became concerned for him and said prayers for him.
“Mama,” Vathana whispered, “what can we do?”
“In time...” the older woman began, but she did not finish. How strong she seemed to her daughter, and how affected seemed her father. Yet Vathana knew her mother was not so much stronger, only she did not show her grief.
“I’m so sad, Mama,” Vathana said. “I’m sad for Yani and Samnang, and I’m so sad for you and Papa.”
“In time...” the older woman repeated. “In time. Now we must plan for your wedding.”
“I won’t go now,” Vathana said compassionately. “I’ll stay with you and Papa.”
“No,” Sok said quietly. “You will go as planned. I will take care of the things your father should do...until he comes awake.”
On the surface Chhuon was spiritless, apathetic about Vathana’s wedding plans, despondent. “Please!” Sok pleaded. “Talk to the monk. Talk to the khrou.” “It was fate,” Cheam said. “Had you taken the trip, had you not, exactly what was fated to occur came to pass.” “Say another prayer,” his cousin Sam advised. “I pray to the spirit of your home,” Sam’s wife, Ry, added. “You have three children alive. You’re a very lucky man.”
But inside, under his despondency, like a planted grain of rice sprouting, flourishing, blooming, spreading its seed, resprouting, multiplying in tranquil paddies under darkened still skies, in him like the wave of snowmelt rushing down the mighty river, building momentum unstoppable, a mantra directed at the yuons rumbled, repeated, doubled with each repetition: blood-for-blood! blood-for-blood!
Blood-for-Blood!
Blood-For-Blood!
BLOOD-FOR-BLOOD!
BLOOD-FOR-BLOOD!
After three days and nights of bound, painful forced march the cool earth and light restraints of the box were a welcome relief. Samnang was frightened yet too exhausted, too confused, too disoriented for the reality of his burial to seize him. For twelve hours he slept. For twelve hours he dreamt nothing, felt nothing, thought nothing. Then, slowly, the earthy facts of capture, rite, witness, march and burial oozed into the emptiness like lava seeping under pressure into a sealed underground chamber.
He tried to open his eyes. Dirt particles fell into the slits. He jammed them shut. They had bound him loosely, only enough to keep his hands and legs still. When they had told him to lie in the dirt in the box, he had done so without the slightest resistance. They had tied his arms at the wrists to loops of vine about his upper thighs. They had wrapped his hands, each finger separately, in soft cloth. Carefully they had packed dirt over his body, enough to fill the box and hold him motionless though not enough to crush him when they shut the lid. Then they fitted a reed through a cloth over his face and pushed it into his lips. They aligned the other end with a hole in the lid, packed his head, neck and face in dirt, closed the lid and buried Samnang’s coffin in a shallow grave. Only the reed tip broke the surface.
When he woke he tried to move his right hand, then his left. A dull force kept them at his side. He wiggled his jaw side to side but was able to open his mouth only a half inch. Immediately fear of losing the reed grasped him and he tightly snapped his lips. He tried his feet, his legs, every joint. Each he was able to move only slightly. Each fractional movement assured him he was alive, whole. His shoulders and arms ached where they previously had been bound. His feet itched at a hundred abrasions. He tried to breathe through his nose. The vacuum in his head made his ears ache. He breathed quickly through the tube. He could hear nothing but his own blood pulsing. His mouth was dry. Suddenly images flooded in. Images of home, family. He pulled violently at the restraints about his wrists but he was unable to budge his arms more than the width of the vine, unable to raise his shoulders or flex his elbows. Immediately he was gasping for air through the narrow reed. He tried to squeeze his hands, to grab his thigh, touch his own skin. He could not feel even one finger against the next. He tried to yell. His voice peed tiny spurts into the tube: “hey! help! help me! help me!” With each effort the dirt on his chest and abdomen fell and constricted and the effort required to suck in enough air to raise the dirt terrified him.
I must pray, he thought. I shall pray. I shall pray like Papa. He tried to clear his mind, to practice perfect attention, but the complete emptiness, the total void, instead of making it easier allowed thousands of thoughts to slip loose of their moorings and cascade into his consciousness. The rapid bombardment of images horrified him. A thought stuck and he leaped for it. Bodies are made of water, earth, wind and fire. He chanted it within his mind. Water earth wind and fire. Water earth wind and fire. He chanted it silently again and again. In thought he offered the Enlightened One his own body, his own water earth wind and fire. For hours he repeated the chant and offer into the constant cool black void.
He slept again. Woke again to nothingness, to total sensory deprivation. No pain. No feeling. No time. He thought of his father. “...a lackey of Pech Lim Song,” Bok Roh had screamed. “A lackey liquidated by the people...” He tried to cry. He could feel his eyes jittering beneath their lids, beneath the cloth and the weight of the soft earth. Dirt particles ground his eyeballs as they skittered below the lids. He could not cry. He cried inside for not being able to cry. He attempted returning to the chant but he could not make his mind hold the words. He saw images of home, wat, school, friends. He saw his mother, Vathana, Samay, Peou. Then the series of roadblocks replayed and that released images of Plei Srepok. Water earth wind and fire. Water earth wind and fire. He did not wish to see Plei Srepok. “Come here,” his father says. “Take care and watch over...” “Yiii...” the giant screams. Waterearthwindfire. Waterearthwindfire. “Never forget our family legacy...” father says. His voice blends with the perfect constantness of the void. “...or the Path of the Elders.” Waterearthwindfire. Fire. Total village immolation. Total blackness surrounding immense flames within his eyes. Within his eyes, head ears scraping naked body. He is blind. He believes he is blind, has been blinded by the sight he has witnessed. Nothing could be so totally black. Empty. He cowers. Tied. Tied to the stake of Plei Srepok. Mute. Dazed. “For all eternity our blood will call for revenge.” Yes Father. “Do not cry.” Yes Father. “Become all you are capable of becoming.” Yes Father. “...watch over Mayana.” Yes...“Yiii-KA!”
Water. Earth. Wind. Fire. Blackness. Trembling. Complete emptiness. Isolation. Void. Nothing. He urinates. The urine feels warm but soon cools and blends with the zero, the hunger, the disorientation, the mystical acceptance. Nang sleeps, wakes. I’ve disappointed Papa, again. Papa, don’t leave me. It wasn’t my fault at school. Please don’t blame me. I won’t disappoint you ever, ever again. Please don’t go. Don’t leave me. Samnang cries, bawls, whimpers himself to sleep. Nang wakes totally numb, totally lost in space, time, emotions. Totally acquiescent.
“What does he say?” Voen whispered to Vathana. Everything inside the Cahuom home was being washed, polished, straightened or freshened. “I...I haven’t asked.” Vathana hung her head concentrating on the flower arrangement. “He’s been so...”
“I know,” Voen said. “Your poor mother. She endures the loss and she has to endure his silence. Still, he is your father. Ask him.”
“But Auntie...” Vathana began, stopped.
“When we were little our father used to make him concentrate on his lessons. More than any of us. ‘Chhuon,’ Pa would say. ‘You’re not the oldest. You’re not the strongest or the biggest. You must be the smartest.’ And he would be silent and think his deep thoughts for weeks. Then he’d come out of it with some new understanding and Pa would shower him with attention.”
“Auntie...” Vathana murmured.
“Um.”
“Would you...” Vathana’s fingers worked nervously at the arrangement, “...ask him for me?”
“No, Vathana.” Voen came, stood behind her, gently straightened Vathana’s hair with her hands. “This is something you must do.”
Vathana said a prayer for her father, her sister and brother. Then she entered the second room. “Father,” she called sweetly. It was the day of the third and last gift-giving ceremony. Mister Pech and his wife had arrived in Phum Sath Din the day before with an entourage of aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. And with Pech Chieu Teck, second son of the wealthy merchant, Vathana’s betrothed. The village was alive with the news, alive with the rumor that the bride’s father had not greeted the lesser guests. Vathana had never been so anxious. How she wished she could again whisper with Yani, giggle about this man who some said looked like the Prince, tell her little sister how she, Vathana, was now afraid to talk to their father.
“Um,” Chhuon grunted. He sat on a sleeping mat, staring at a blank spot on the wall. His grief had not tempered. He was withdrawn, argumentative, irritable. Only a month had passed from the ceremony for his father and young children to the occasion of the first gift-giving, and only two weeks more. For days he had stooped silently in paddies, weeding, moving handfuls of mud meaninglessly. With his hands in the mud he had felt he could almost touch his son. Inside he screamed. Nights he dreamt of Kdeb and Yani. Mayana was at peace. He could sense it. Kdeb’s spirit was hurt, lost.
“Teck’s sister and brother have brought bolts of English linen and Thai silk. Mama, Grandma and Aunt Voen have prepared a very special meal and everyone is dressed so beautifully. Even cousin Sam and Ry and Great Aunt Moeun have come. Please Papa, smile. For me.”
“Yes.” Chhuon’s answer was simple. A smile wrinkled his face. He looked up at his daughter.
“Papa!” Vathana cried.
“We’ll have a good talk,” Chhuon said. “We’ll plan everything as it should be. When we’re finished eating I’ll come and ask you to meet our guests. You know how very distinguished Mister Pech is, eh? Ah, but I think still, you’re too beautiful for his son.”
Vathana laughed, at first a small titter, then a bigger giggle, then a sustained gleeful laugh. It was the first time in seven weeks Chhuon had joked with her, with anyone, had given her any indication he was aware of the wedding plans. Vathana went to him, knelt beside him. She grasped his callused hands. Chhuon squeezed her hands briefly then said, “Now go. Let me get ready.”
Blossoms and candles made the central room of the Cahuom home feel as elegant as the dining room of the best French restaurant in Neak Luong. Mister Pech and his wife were expected within the hour for the connecting-word ceremony, a serious conversation about the couple’s future, a bountiful meal, and a time for Vathana to meet, for the first time, her betrothed. On the morrow the four parents would go to the khrou for advice on picking a lucky day for the wedding.
That Vathana had never spoken to Teck was not unusual.
Nor was it unusual that he had seen her only in a photograph. Uncle Cheam had made the preliminary arrangements and he was trusted by all. Pech Lim Song knew that Cahuom Chhuon’s family was a good family, if rural, and Chhuon knew that the Pechs were of excellent ancestry. To the parents, nothing more need be of concern.
Chhuon washed, dressed in his best clothes. He stopped every few minutes to kiss his statuette of Buddha seven times. His hair had grown an inch long since the hundredth-day ceremony for his father. One did not shave one’s head for the death of a child. To keep the bristles from standing straight out, Chhuon oiled them lightly and combed them to one side. He could not help but feel empty as he checked himself in a mirror, and he could not rejoice at the thought of Vathana’s wedding. Tiny Phum Sath Din, he thought, raising children to populate the cities. Samay had moved to the monastery to begin Sangha training. Vathana would move to Neak Luong. No...he could not repeat their names again. Only Peou will be here, he thought. Only Peou.
After three days, Met Hon lifted Nang from the coffin. He hugged him. He held the boy for a long silent moment. Nang’s body hung limp in his arms. “Tonight you’ve been reborn,” Met Hon whispered. “You are as an infant in my arms. We will care for you and nurture you all the days of your life.” He lay Nang on a sleeping mat over soft earth, untied his wrists, unwrapped his fingers. The boy’s body was cool, cold, clammy. His eyes seemed disconnected within their sockets, falling to different angles in the dim light of late dusk. Met Hon left. A pang of fear whisked through Nang’s chest, his only emotional capacity. Met Hon returned with hot tea, lifted the boy’s head and gently let him sip the liquid. “You shall be one with the Movement,” Hon whispered, “and we shall usher in an age more remarkable than that of the Angkor kings.”
Hon pulled the boy onto his lap and held him for an hour. His body heat warmed Nang. Slowly the stiffness dissipated from the boy’s limbs. He moved his shoulders, then fingers, ankles, knees. “I’m hungry,” he said.
“Then you shall feast,” Met Hon answered. He helped Nang roll to his knees and stand. The boy wobbled. “You are very strong,” Hon praised him as he led him to a small bamboo table at the center of the camp. “You must obey all orders of the Movement. Then you’ll be allowed whatever you need.” On the table were sandals, fresh clothes, a sleeping blanket, and three beautiful bowls of food—a noodle dish with chicken, a river fish cooked in banana leaves, and a huge rice pot.
“Tell me your name,” Met Hon whispered quietly.
“Cahuom Samnang,” the boy said.
“No!” Hon barked viciously.
Samnang startled, trembled, fell to his knees cowering.
“Tell me your name,” Met Hon hissed angrily.
“Nang?” the boy whimpered.
“Met Nang,” Hon corrected.
“Met Nang,” Nang said.
“You may dress. Eat your fill of rice.” Hon spoke flatly, with neither respect nor ridicule. To a guard he said, “Take the other dishes away.”
Nang scooped a handful of rice into his mouth. He dressed in the clothes of the Movement as he chewed, then he ate more greedily. After he stuffed himself, he retched. He rushed as quickly as his stiffness allowed from the table but vomited onto a muddy path which led through the camp.
Hon pounced on him. He screamed, grabbing the boy’s slender shoulders, shaking him, “How dare you vomit food the Movement has provided. See what greed produces. Ingrate! Eat it!” Hon shoved Nang’s face into the vomit and mud. “Eat!” he screamed. He held Nang roughly by the back of the neck as the boy licked the ground. “Good,” Hon said, relaxing his grip but not letting go. “Ah, much better, Comrade. You see, you can obey the Movement. Tonight you shall rest. Eat as you wish. Prepare yourself. Strengthen yourself. At dawn we commence our march.”
Nang was led back to his coffin and left. The guard gave him no instructions, no indication if he was allowed to stand, sit, lie, sleep, walk about. Again he was alone. He looked into the darkness hoping to find something, anything, on which to center himself, on which to pin this new, strange reality. He squatted beside the coffin, wrapped the sleeping blanket about his shoulders, shuttered in the cold night dampness and the residual chill from the grave. Again there was radio music. Two guards passed on the trail. In the light of their lantern he saw they were heavy, thickset, strong. He heard their speech and he thought, rural. From villages so isolated they must be without pagodas or schools. Their strangeness frightened him.
Nang thought carefully about what he had seen of the camp.
The site repulsed him. The guards were slovenly. Except for Hon. Hon was immaculate, educated. Hon, he thought. He was no older than Samay, sixteen, yet he seemed to be in command. Who is Hon? he thought. In the darkness and stillness the question convoluted. Who is Nang? Quietly he began to sob. Nang, son of Chhuon who has been liquidated. He said a prayer for Chhuon’s spirit and wished it a peaceful journey and quick progress to its next re-creation. Then he thought of escape, of Nang rising and walking silently into the jungle, but Samnang, he thought, has no knowledge of where he is, of where he should go, of how to survive in the wild. Nang has no light, he thought. Y Bhur would know. The name awakened images that made him tremble. Fighting back the nightmare he thought, Tomorrow I’ll find Y Bhur, Y...No. Met Ur.
Nang lay on the coffin. Again he cried. He was alone, isolated now even from Hon, isolated by Hon’s violent burst of anger. Alone, withdrawn, withdrawing, his only friend and companion the half-developed consciousness of an eleven-year-old boy which seethed in darkness behind eyes, which was repulsed and disgusted by the vile scenes its own core demanded to repeat...to repeat...to repeat the cleaving. He sees Samnang, tied, trussed, forced to watch. He sees Bok Roh swing, hears the giant scream, sees the massive cleaver enter, the head part, the right half fall on the shoulder of a body not yet realizing it has died, the left half for a fraction of a second looking like a drawing, for a fraction seeing the mystery before the surface seeps a thousand drops of blood and cloaks the drawing red, sees the machete wedge into the bone at the midback, sees the giant kick his sister’s body from the blade. Sees nothing in the dark nightmist, nothing in the deepest of darknesses within.
First light penetrates the jungle canopy. Met Nang opens his eyes. He is surprised at the size of the complex, at the number of small shelters. He sits up. There are at least thirty two-man sleeping positions, perhaps more, plus a dozen hammocks, and half a dozen coffins. He does not move. From the coffin lid he can see a single delicate filament strung to a leaf perhaps ten feet away. Mist has settled on the web and formed a series of miniature pearllike droplets. They are beautiful, he thinks. He shivers. He is afraid to move. Others in camp are up. He stares at the pearls, stares into the jungle. There are thousands of filaments with minute morning pearls reflecting almost imperceptibly the hint of light beneath the vegetation. Whoever Nang is, he thinks, there is still the spider, the web, the glass beads.
They can have him, he thinks. He does not think clearly, verbally. He sees his body as a mass of glutinous rice capable of being tamped and shaped by the blade of a knife. Nang’s body rises, rolls the sleeping mat and blanket. Outside, he is obedient, withdrawn, pliable, yet at the core there is a being still intact. Whether, he thinks, the vessel is Samnang or Met Nang makes no difference.
For eleven days Nang marched with the long patrol, marched through jungle and over mountains, seemingly not in a single direction but in circles, or perhaps in an expanding spiral or simply in meandering curves with a general destination but no constraint of time, marched toward the first segment of his formal training. Each day Nang marched more easily, each day he ate better, each day he became stronger and each day Met Hon instructed him in hygiene, jungle and camp life, cooking, sanitation, even sleeping, resting, sitting on one sandal with feet on the other so as not to muddy one’s clothes. Each day Hon instructed him in proper thought and action. Each day he punished him for improper behavior.
“No crying,” Hon seethed the third night.
Nang had dreamed Chhuon’s spirit was beseeching him. “But my father...” Nang began.
Hon snapped. “There is no father.” He dropped his anger. “There is only the Movement. The man who sired you only did his duty for the collective good of Cambodia.”
On the fourth day Nang asked, “May I speak to Met Ur?”
“He is ill,” Hon answered.
“But he marches with us. I’ve seen him at the rear of the column.”
Hon spit, disgusted. “Why do you concern yourself with him?”
“He’s...” Nang’s face contorted. “He’s my friend.”
“He’s a burden to the Movement,” Met Hon rasped. “The Movement is your only friend.”
“I could help him. He’ll help the Movement.”
“Ah. So you’re that strong, eh? Then you’ll be responsible for him. If he doesn’t keep up, you’ll be beaten.”
Y Bhur, Met Ur, was wretched, sick, pathetic. Nang himself felt dirtier than a sweat-coated mountain woman cutting dry rice in the hot sun, but Met Ur’s countenance was vile, repugnant. Nang’s smell was that of the unwashed; Met Ur’s that of decay, mummification. Under Hon’s eyes Nang forced himself to behold Ur, forced himself to near his friend, to touch him, to offer him a hesitant repulsed hug.
“Met Ur,” Nang whispered, “we’re...we’re to march again. I’ve come to”—Y Bhur glared at the boy through sunken hollow eyes, the skin below them so drawn and the eyeballs so shrunken and glazed, Nang could see the yellow inner tissues of the sockets—“I’ve come to help you.”
“May their spirits depart in peace,” Y Bhur muttered in Jarai. “May they never return.” Nang froze. He had lost his father and sister. He had not thought of Y Bhur’s loss. “Spirits.” Y Bhur coughed. “Do not retrace your steps.”
“Stop him from muttering that cluck,” Met Hon descended upon them. “Make him march.”
Nang gripped the boy who had once been his friend, who had once been much larger than he, gripped his flaccid arms and pulled him up. “You can do it,” he said. “You must...” He cowered beneath Hon’s glare. “His...his leg’s bad,” Nang mumbled. “It should be treated.”
“If the Movement wished to treat him,” Hon scowled, “he would be treated.”
Throughout the day Nang urged Y Bhur to walk faster, to try harder. “Do all you’re capable of,” he said as sincerely as his father had once said it to him. “Don’t cry.” When they came to steep inclines Nang half carried him. When they rested by a stream Nang unwound the leg bandage. The stench revolted him. The sight of the festering raw meat horrified him. He forced Y Bhur to sit in shallow rushing current where he, Nang, scraped the surface of the wound with a sharp stone as he’d once seen the khrou clean an abscess from his father’s foot. Nang beat the swollen thigh with the butt of the rock until the oozing yellow-green fluid turned red. Then he washed the bandage and reapplied it.
They moved again. Hon marched before them, several guards behind. “At our next rest,” Nang turned and whispered to Y Bhur in Jarai, “I’ll get you a walking stick.”
He turned back forward into Hon’s flying fist. The punch sent him sprawling. “Speak Khmer!” Met Hon spat angrily. “Or you’ll be killed.”
On the fifth day and again on the seventh and eighth the size of the column increased. Nang didn’t know the extent of the unit but he’d seen five more who he took to be, like himself, conscripts. He estimated there were at least three guards for each newly selected child.
The school to which Nang was being marched was officially known as the Liberation School, but Khmer Communist cadres (and later Royal Cambodian intelligence reports, and later still Western documents) referred to it as the School of the Cruel.
“Come on,” Nang tormented Y Bhur. “Get up. They won’t wait.” Y Bhur rolled to his side and pulled himself halfway up using the staff Nang had brought. He looked to Nang for assistance. They did not speak. In the five days since Nang had begun helping him his strength and condition had stabilized. He was sallow, limp, odorous and repulsive but the slide toward death had temporarily halted. Nang washed his bandage and wound only twice more, both on their second day. That night six guards beat Nang and for the next two days his rice ration was halved. “Damn it,” Nang cursed Y Bhur like Met Hon had cursed him so many times. “March. March, Met Ur, or I shall beat you.”
During marches Nang did not speak. He eyed Hon and the guards. Except for Met Hon all were humorless, faceless, hostile. Stupid, Nang thought. Underlings, he thought. Not crocodiles, not tigers: Dogs.
On the eleventh day they marched into the crotch of two blunt Laotian legs which jutted into Cambodia. They climbed beside a creek for several kilometers then rested and set up cooking fires. Met Hon motioned for Met Nang to come with him and Nang obeyed immediately. Hon led him nearly a hundred meters away from the others. Before he spoke he sized up Nang with his eyes. He spoke gently. “If you’re to survive, Little Brother,” he said, using the forbidden appellation, “you must learn to keep your mouth shut, your eyes closed and your ears plugged. You must forget everything from the past.” He glanced up the mountain. “Pong Pay is the hardest training on earth.” Nang looked up but could see little other than the vegetation of the canopy. “If you’re going to become a comrade of the Movement, not just a soldier, you must be serious. You must do what you are told.”
The cadres did not come for the conscripts until night had settled upon the temporary camp. At dusk the conscripts had been huddled together at the camp’s center, had had their wrists tied behind their backs with vines, and then all their hands were tied together. If seen from above they would have looked like a human wheel, their hands the hub, their arms stretched behind their backs like spokes.
“No words! No movement!” Met Hon had ordered. Then he and the guards had backed into the jungle and vanished.
For ten minutes no one spoke. They stood quietly in the blackness. Fear descended upon them, ten boys trapped, trussed together, cold, alone, shaking. Y Bhur broke the silence. He was wired to Nang on his left and a Khmer boy he’d heard called Pah on his right. “Samnang,” Y Bhur whispered. He spoke in Jarai. “My hands. I think I can get loose. We can run away.”
Nang shuddered silently. Y Bhur’s hands twisted at the hub of the wheel. The motion tightened the vines about the others’ wrists. “Samnang, raise your hand. No, push it down.”
On the far side a Mnong boy wept quietly, wrenched his hands distorting the circle. Another boy grunted. One groaned at the increasing pain. A third muttered in French, “Stop. You’re cutting me.”
“Be still!” Nang snapped. The boys quieted, quit pulling at the vines. Nang cowered—ashamed in the dark, ashamed of his voice, his order, afraid of alienating the others. Y Bhur again twisted. He pulled hard with his right hand and pushed with his left. The vines cut into the base of his right thumb. He pulled harder, twisting toward Nang. The vine slid. His hand deformed from the pressure, molded to the oblique circuit of liana. He pulled harder, gouging his flesh. The blood greased his skin. The vine began to slip. Nang raised his right foot. He cocked his leg behind him. “Be still!” he sneered. Then he whipped his knee into Y Bhur’s wounded thigh.
“Aaaaahhh!” Y Bhur shouted. “Why...oooph!” A club struck him in the chest. Another hit him. Then all of the conscripts were being wildly beaten by unseen attackers, bashed in the legs, the groin, the stomach. One cringing pulled another forward into a bludgeoning blow.
“Stand still!” The order came in Khmer from deep in the blackness. The blows softened to probes and jabs. Still the boys could not see their tormentors.
A club poked Y Bhur in the groin. “Fuck water buffalo,” he hissed in Jarai.
“With your member.” The tormentor laughed. He spoke Jarai.
Y Bhur lunged outward trying to butt his head against the source of the voice in the dark. The entire circle stumbled, the sides fell, the back toppled. Y Bhur, pinned at the bottom, screamed vicious obscenities in Jarai and Khmer and Viet Namese.
“Quiet!” The order came from nearby. The officer moved close. “You shall be as one,” he said calmly. “You shall walk as one. School is two kilometers. If you walk as a team, we will be there shortly. If you walk as ten...Well, we have all night. You”—he reached down and grabbed a head by the hair and lifted—“you shall lead off. What’s your name?”
“Met Nang.”
A slap stung Nang’s face. He shivered, tried to pull his face into his chest. “Nang,” the cadreman said. “You don’t merit to be called ‘comrade.’ If you last through school, then you’ll be Met Nang. Now walk.” Nang could feel the conscripts struggling to their feet beside and behind him. “Met Din,” the cadreman said softly, “hook your rope to Nang’s neck so he’ll know the way.”
The night was hard on the conscripts. For hours, tied, they stumbled in the dark attempting to negotiate steep, narrow mountain trails. When one fell, they all fell. When one collapsed, they all collapsed. The clubbings continued. If their progress was too slow the leader was jabbed in the stomach. Then the lead changed. At times the boys worked together, counting steps quietly to develop a rhythm, but more often they argued nastily, blaming one another, or one gave up, fell, cried like an infant, or tugged back when he felt another tug too hard. The guards laughed at the boys’ pain.
As dawn broke they glimpsed the compound for the first time. Nang glanced furtively past Y Bhur. He looked down. Not until they had reached a point only two or three meters from the bluff did any of them realize they had finished their night’s trek. They stood at the edge of a small cliff which formed one end barrier of the school. Ten feet below, and stretching for several hundred meters, Nang could see a huge, partially camouflaged compound sectioned like an egg crate into subcamps by high bamboo fences. The closest compound was empty except for a flagpole with a small red flag hanging limp. Other sections held a variety of buildings: one had small shells, another seemingly had longhouses and schools. Glimpses of hundreds of armed guards along the fences made him tremble.
A guard’s laugh tore him from the view. The guard laughed hysterically. Other guards were pointing to different boys and giggling mean giggles. They placed wagers—this one will break, this one will die, this one will be good fertilizer. More guards appeared. They were dressed in black with red- or green-striped kramas about their necks. They were more solemn though they too laughed menacingly. The guards of the night stood back and gave wide berth to the new squad. The conscripts, still tied in a wheel, sensed a new phase had begun.
One boy, the smallest, to Nang’s left, began sobbing. Nang jerked the hub, trying to shake the child. Two more black-clad guards appeared. Between them they carried a long, thick bamboo pole. They chuckled. The others laughed. The conscripts cowered, silent except for the littlest, spent, exhausted from days of fear and constant walking, and the night of the wheel. Nang knew what was coming. He sensed the meaning of the bluff even before the pole appeared, and he vowed inwardly to survive. The pole was placed tangentially against the circle, contacting at the waists of two boys with their backs to the bluff. The two touched by the pole stepped back, forcing the wheel to stumble a step closer to the edge. At each end of the pole, first one, then two, then three guards pushed the pole toward the small cliff. The wheel resisted. The guards pushed harder though not hard enough to force the wheel off the edge. Y Bhur faced the cliff. Below, the ground was barren red-orange hardpack. Nang, to his left, planted his heels as best he could. He crouched, pulled with his right hand, pushed with his left, trying to turn the circle. He did not want to be on the bottom when they hit. Y Bhur stood, offered little resistance. Some resisted violently, some spasmodically. The circle turned counterclockwise a full hour as the side opposite Nang fell back a step under the pressure of the pole. The guards giggled, keeping the pressure constant, not wanting to push the wheel over the cliff, which they could have easily done, but wanting to see the conscripts relent, slowly, to their sense of the inevitable. “Nooo,” the smallest boy wailed. “No-aaahh.” The far side stumbled back another step, the circle rotated. If the boy with his toes over the bluff’s edge was at twelve o’clock, Nang was at nine. He judged that to be a good position. The guards forced the pole another inch. The heels of the boy at twelve skidded to the edge, he straightened, the edge collapsed, his feet shot out, his arms snapped up as the hub resisted, then slowly the sides collapsed, accelerating, Y Bhur to his right knee, off, others, then all. The wheel slapped down, a rapid thudding and three loud cracks. Guards cheered. Then the moaning began.