THE INTERNATIONAL NEW YEAR had passed (the Cambodian New Year falls in mid-April) and the dry season was upon the land. Cahuom Chhuon broke from his heavy labor. His pants were soaked with sweat and stuck in his crotch. He had eaten less and less each day for six months and his once stocky body was light, not frail but wiry. He mopped his brow with a rag, a worn krama Sok had begun to use for cleaning. When he’d grabbed it he’d felt a certain pleasure, a certain acknowledgment in the denial to himself of a new krama. For a month he’d washed it daily in the river when he’d broken from his chores.
Chhuon sat beneath a tree at the river’s edge. The afternoon sun bore through the branches to bake him but he did not move. He’d rinsed in the current, washed the rag, wrung it and sat. Slowly he placed the rag over his head. He sat erect, perfectly still, cleared his mind. His breath came shallow. He could feel his face, his jowls, sag. The weight of his thumbs felt like thousands of pounds, his wrists drooped, his hands turned inward on his thighs, the sun burned their backs.
Peou must go to school. Sok must eat. His thoughts ran down his responsibilities as if he had a list. Cousin Sam needs help repairing his furrower. A cloud passed in front of the sun. Coolness enwrapped him. He shivered slightly but refused to respond. Seed must be distributed, his thoughts continued. I must write Vathana. The cloud cleared and again the sun burned into his hands, arms, body. And I must awaken my people, Chhuon thought. But how? Awaken them to the yuon threat. How? There must be revenge.
Vathana was unhappy.
Pech Chieu Teck was proper. His lovemaking was proper, his behavior and manners were impeccable. The luxuries he, his family, especially his mother, showered on the new bride were marvelous, yet in a month’s time Vathana felt as if she’d been tethered to an elephant and was about to be trampled. She told herself it was natural, told herself, “Mama called them post-wedding blues.” Aunt Voen, in her intimate manner, had kidded Vathana before the wedding, “with all his money, you’ll have nothing to do”—she’d giggled—“but the best thing.” For a month Vathana clung to the thought that they, she and Teck together, were very proper.
Yet something was wrong. She hid her feelings from her husband, from everyone, blamed herself for feeling empty, felt guilty for having such thoughts. At the market she met a woman who lived in the same building two floors below and in a gush of desperation she whispered, “He’s like cold rice. He never talks to me. He doesn’t want me.”
The woman mocked her. “It takes time to adjust,” she said. “Rice doesn’t grow in a day and cold rice is better than no rice, eh?” The guilt increased.
By the second month Vathana was very unhappy. Indeed, she had nothing to do. This man was nothing like her father. He was proper but he seemed to have no interests, no desires, no passions, no drives. Or at least none he shared with her. People seemed to mean little to him. He was neither friendly nor aggressive. Business did not interest him; of his studies he seemed apathetic. Despite the new appliances, the closets full of clothes, the apartment with furnishings even Aunt Voen with a home in Phnom Penh would envy, Vathana felt nothing. No intimacy, no spirituality.
She prayed. Her very first memories of her father were of him praying, teaching her to pray, teaching her to look inside herself even before she had reached the age of reason. Always he had taken her to the pagoda to pray, to ask the Holy One’s blessing, to help the spirit of a recently departed villager. Always they had talked of things which concerned the family or the village, talked of business, politics, religion, of dreams, health and the beauty of growing rice. In the late fifties, when Vathana. was eight or nine, before Chhuon had entered business with Uncle Cheam, she recalled him donating to the monks a portion of the little they had, not because he, Chhuon, wished others to know he donated, not even to earn merit and ensure his next life’s status, but because he believed, without trappings, that it was right. It was his way. Now it was hers.
Teck was not like her father. After the ceremonies had ended, the guests had gone home, the food and presents had been repacked and stored, after they had settled in, alone, without family, without parents or siblings in a culture where solitude is almost unknown, Teck had called as many people as he could muster, his school friends, workers from the piers, peasants he knew in the city delivering farm goods, so they could witness him donating a few unwanted gifts and several hundred riels to the bonze. To Vathana, in their abundance, the gifts were meaningless, insulting.
And Teck didn’t work. Mister Pech had given his son a river barge as a wedding present. The barges traveled the Mekong from My Tho, South Viet Nam, to Phnom Penh, under new license and the semicontrol of Sihanouk’s nationalization of trade. Since September 1968, trade and banking were being gradually returned to private control. Both nationalization and denationalization had worked to Pech Lim Song’s benefit. Under each change his profits increased. But whereas Teck’s father managed every detail of order, purchase, transport and delivery, Teck appointed a barge captain and collected money due. Day after day she watched him sitting, listening passively to the radio. When she mentioned it, when she attempted to show affection, he shrank back, became defensive, then left for the dance halls to be with his idle pals from their student days. To Vathana the contrast between Teck’s cool, seemingly frivolous behavior and both her father’s and her father-in-law’s constant, diligent work was bewildering. Daily she compared the three men, daily her resentment grew. Even in her father’s withdrawal following the death of her siblings, she’d seen him labor harder and communicate more intimately than her new, wealthy husband.
Then everything changed.
“Madam, I must speak to your husband.” It was the barge captain. He had come to their apartment house shouting the name Pech Chieu Teck loudly dozens of times until he was directed to the fourth floor, then down the hallway. He banged on the door, once, and barged in. “It’s very urgent,” he said in French.
“He’s not here,” Vathana responded, also in French.
“He must be!” The captain threw his arms in the air, looked up and down, into the doorways to the other rooms, arms flailing as if he could turn over the entire room and check under each object and thus produce the man he desired to see.
“He’s not here,” Vathana repeated. “He’s...” She hesitated. “...dancing.”
“Dancing? Dancing!” The captain exploded. He smacked a fist into an open palm. “The river burns and he’s dancing!?”
“Please.” Vathana’s hands swayed gracefully toward a chair. “I can help. Tea? Have you had rice today?”
The captain sat momentarily, then sprang up and paced as Vathana brought out rice, tea, a plate of pickled fish. “We must arm the crew,” the captain said, his arms flying in exasperation.
“Now,” Vathana said calmly, “you will tell me all.”
“The water’s low this time of year,” the captain said as if explaining to a child. “The river’s not so wide. They attack us more easily.”
“Who?”
“Who? Who knows? Bandits!” he shouted. “This morning, not twenty-five kilometers from here they rose up out of the swamps west of the channel. You know Phum Sambour? Just below. Where the river’s very narrow. They wounded two crewmen. Good men.”
“I beg you”—Vathana showed deep concern—“tell me how you run the barge.”
“Madam, come with me. I’ll show you.”
For an hour the captain explained the incidents on the river as he and Vathana walked the deck, inspected the sandbagged wheelhouse, the hold and the damage caused by the rocket-propelled grenade which had wounded the men. For two hours he explained the operations of the barge, and of the tugs which were required at the ports. He showed her channel charts and explained why they had to hug one shore here, the other there. Then he resuggested armament.
“And the army?” Vathana asked.
“Useless.” The riverman shook his head. “Across the border the ARVN river patrols come. Here, we radio the Royals and we must negotiate payment before they come. Madam,” he said, “we must arm.”
Vathana turned away, looked down the river. For the first time she felt she had some understanding of the business her husband failed to direct, felt she might have a reason to be in Neak Luong. Could she direct the business? She turned back, fixed the captain with her stare. Her stomach tightened. She had no breath to speak. Yes, she thought, I can. I can. “Do what you must”—she gasped, she gulped air, blurted: “to arm the men.”
The captain locked his eyes on her. His stare was savage, challenging. Vathana stared back. “I want to know everything that concerns this vessel,” she said firmly. “Where you go, when, the crew, exactly what you buy, what you fire off.” She inhaled deeply. With her assertion came an unexpected calm. “Fight only to defend yourselves,” she said. “We’re a merchant company, not an army.”
Though Nang and Eng traveled with fellow Communists, they were outsiders. Their training, their age, their feeling of racial superiority alienated them. The Viet Namese were five to forty years older. Nang and Eng were but twelve. For Nang there was no trust, no solidarity with yuons. At times he spied Mountaineers, some soldiers but mostly coolies. With them he felt a kinship yet he did not approach. Amongst them he looked for the giant.
Nang, Eng, and Binh became a cell. Comrade Binh was Viet Namese, a lame, combatant of the People’s Army of Viet Nam (PAVN). He was their guide, their authorization to be on the trail. He made no attempt to be their friend. Nang was not sure where Binh was leading them; he had been told only that it was toward a camp at which Bok Roh trained others, a camp of international training. For thirty-four days they walked north, rode north, at times during the day, mostly at night. Each day Nang felt the removal from Kampuchea more deeply; each night he questioned this disruption of his mission.
The land changed drastically. For a time they traveled in steep mountains, for a time over relatively flat plateau. At one point the mountain paths were so steep that in a week they covered no more than thirty kilometers. It became cold, colder than Nang had ever known. The dry season was under way in Cambodia but here rains continued. Binh called them mountain rains. Most of the traffic they saw was heading south. To Nang, the vision of thousands of soldiers, with thousands of bicycles and thousands of heavy trucks, more vehicles than he’d seen in his entire life, was intimidating. Gone was the security of Cambodia. Every night planes bombed or strafed distant sections of the trail; uncanny, Nang heard porters say, in their accuracy. Each night the planes destroyed huge amounts of materiel and many vehicles. Some soldiers were killed, some wounded, but personnel trails were separate from truck routes and only truck routes were bombed.
To have that power, Nang thought. Yet it’s like trying to stop the flow of a river by tossing boulders into the current. They alter the course, even back the stream into pools, but eventually the water leaks through and flows on. Still, he thought, still...
Each night, antecedent to bombing, flares popped and lit the roadway. Invariably, second flares and second bombing waves followed. Nang came to enjoy the noise on the parallel trails. When the flares came he would sit, his arms squeezed tightly to his sides, his fists at his lowered chin, and he would wonder about the power. Then one night, in the last flat light before the second wave of explosions, Nang witnessed the severity of damage inflicted by bomb shrapnel on yuon torsos. The sight struck him. All that night he thought about the power, the ability to kill from such a great distance.
By the twenty-third day they had moved north of the bombing grids. There they rendezvoused with other pairs of Khmer boys, each escorted by a PAVN soldier. For five days they marched, their column ever increasing. Then, with hundreds of others, they were trucked out of the mountains, into beautiful tropical hills, and deposited at an immense training camp where armored vehicles, tanks, cannons and AA guns were in abundance.
China, Nang thought. China!
“Someone is bombing,” Vathana said in French. They spoke only French in the apartment. “Also, I must tell you...”
“To you, always there is a crisis,” Teck retorted. He looked at his wife with disgust, the same look his father gave his mother when they argued.
“Eh...” Her primary thought had been of personal news yet his words made her defensive. “Why can’t it be true?” she said. “Does the captain lie?”
“Did he see them bomb?” Teck’s voice was harsh. Ever since the betrothal he had been seething inside—angry with his father for attaching him to this peasant girl, angry with his culture for demanding obedience, compliance to the wishes of the elders, angry with himself for not being able to say he wanted more, wanted to go to Paris, to find an educated woman, to lead his own life as he pictured a French son would. “No!” he shouted. “Did any of the crew see bombings? No! I tell you if the South Viet Namese bombed as you say, Samdech Sihanouk would have been on the radio for five hours.”
“Maybe he refuses to believe it. It could be...”
“It could be nothing.” Teck stood, tense. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone,” he yelled at her. “We were paid. We had a good captain. You order guns for them. You tell them when and where to load, to unload?! You and that damn monk. What does he know?”
“They’ve no reason to report untruths,” Vathana said bitterly. “No reason.” She reached to her chest, pulled out the statuette of Buddha carved from her grandfather’s tooth that her father had given her the last day of the wedding ceremony. “The crew brought six children and their mother upriver. She said she was there. She said the ground trembled and many bombs tore the jungle where the Viet Namese had their camp. You could have talked to them. No, you have to dance.”
“Stay out of this business. Why can’t you believe like your father?”
“My father!?” Vathana caressed the statuette.
“My father says your father told him, ‘War is for politicians. Not for us.’ I believe that.”
Vathana stared at her husband. He had never spoken so harshly to her, had never shown such emotion. She wanted him to talk but now she wanted to win the argument. “Two crewmen refuse to cross the border, refuse to even travel near the border. What politician will convince them to go?”
“You want to run the company?” Teck snapped the words. He spun, walked toward the door. Spun, strode back. “Let me do it. To hell with those two. Get a new crew. I’m going out.”
“Out?” Vathana shook her head. “How can you do it? You’re always out. We’ve reports of Khmer Rouge attacking villages above Kratie. Reports of bombings. Maybe South Viet Namese attack North Viet Namese on Cambodian soil. Samdech Euv’s wife, she and her brother...your father says they collaborate in rice smuggling to the VC and NVA. Don’t you listen to your father?”
“My father knows only money,” Teck shouted. “There’s nothing to worry about. In a short time all this will pass.”
“Pass! A short time! It gets worse.”
“You know what I hear? I hear the people in the countryside help the Khmer Rouge because they can trust the Khmer Rouge. I hear the Communists are good. Tell that to my father. I hear they help the farmers. My father talks of crocodiles. It’s the Royal Army who are crocodiles. Ha! All the people in the city are afraid. He’s afraid. You’re afraid. You should be. Ha!”
“Teck! Stop it!”
“No! If the Khmer Rouge build a solid relationship with the peasants, why should I object? The government doesn’t help them. You make believe you want to help people but you’re just like my father.”
“Your father’s a good man. You should be half like him.”
“I’m sick of being under his control. And of you controlling me for him. I’m going dancing.” Teck steamed to the door. “Think”—he grasped the handle—“if the barge crew fires at anyone, it’ll be Khmers they kill. Tell that to your monk and my father.”
“I will,” Vathana began, “and, wait, I’ve got to tell you...”
“You tell me nothing.” Teck slammed the door.
“...tell you that”—she hung her head, tears came to her eyes—“that I’m pregnant.”
China! Nang thought. He stared at the soldiers before him. China! The concept stirred stories from his early youth, stories of adventure, of an exotic and rich land. Yet he yearned for Cambodia. Beyond the lush green rolling hills, over the mountains, down the trail, there was a people’s war, a movement to liberate his homeland from the feudalism of Norodom Sihanouk, from the capitalism of the right, the imperialism of overseas Chinese and Westerners, and the invasion by the yuon armies.
Guoshen surveyed his new charges. “I’m here to teach you,” he said. His smile flicked, his eyes set on Nang, his smile froze. Nang’s eyes were the most animal he had ever seen. Guoshen welcomed Nang, then the others. “It’s our duty to teach, to give you a strong mental foundation in politics and order. Others will teach you the mechanics of war. I will teach you the spirit of revolution. I will tell you how to convert others.”
As Guoshen spoke, Nang sized him up. Round faced, Nang thought. Square bodied, quick tongued. Ha! Nang thought. Larger than me, larger than my father, but not Khmer, not pure. Nang felt superior, yet he was aware of an inferiority, a backwardness he sensed all Khmers, all third-world soldiers, must feel when surrounded by the military hardware of a superpower. Nang felt isolated, stuck in a foreign training camp where even other Khmers seemed alien. The front! He dreamed of it. He prayed for it. Let me go to the front, he thought. Let me be a soldier. Then he thought of Bok Roh. Let me see him, he thought. Let me see that face. Then let me go.
“...we shall, as one, create new socialist men,” Guoshen was saying.
Nang looked past the Chinese boy. Four Soviet PT-76 light tanks were crossing a field beyond what would be their first bivouac. The tanks were joined by six Chinese Type 59s, copies of the Soviet medium T-54. Within minutes the armor, with their huge 100mm guns, disappeared. Power, Nang thought, power.
“...The goal,” Guoshen quoted Mao, “is to demolish all old ideology and culture, to create and cultivate among the masses an entirely new proletarian ideology and culture. You and I are vehicles. Youth, those least poisoned by tradition, can wipe out feudalism, capit...”
Then let us go do it, Nang’s thought broke in.
“...all items of the past shall be flung into the fires which smelt the future. All people with problems of thought must be denounced, exposed and publicly humiliated...”
Again the tanks roared into view. Nang stopped listening. The PT-76s were followed by several armored personnel carriers and a dozen trucks trailing twin-barreled 23mm antiaircraft guns. Nang wanted to learn about the guns, about their firepower. Guoshen’s ideology did not interest him.
“Met Nang!” A Khmer cadreman interrupted his wandering thoughts. “Later you’ll be taught about them. Pay attention here.”
For months Nang paid attention. The school, the People’s Liberation Army Camp for Foreign Nationals north of the Lihsien River in southern China, trained soldiers from different nations, or different factions within a nation. Training was carried out with little contact between groups. Though boys and girls from Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, India, Japan, Thailand, Laos, North and South Viet Nam, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Pakistan were all being trained, Krahom cadets had no contact with them, nor did they mingle with Khmer Viet Minh trainees. The staff was international consisting largely of Maoist Chinese or Red Guard Youth, and Chinese graduates of Moscow’s School of Terrorism. It also included some Russians and Eastern Europeans and a dozen Cubans. Units were grouped into battalions, led by semipermanent cadres of their own countrymen who lived with them, cared for them, treated them like precious family, ensured that their needs, within the parameters of the training mission, were met.
Each day began with rigorous calisthenics followed by long, grueling hill runs and practice sessions in crawling, hiding, digging in and hand-to-hand combat. Then lecture, drill, review, rehearsal. Through the long months of training Nang changed. He had shed his flimsy appearance at the School of the Cruel, now, taller, he filled out, added muscle, developed a form like his father’s.
Lectures were systematic. Each class began with one student reading the material aloud while the others followed in workbooks. Trainers demonstrated and summarized, then asked for opinions, which were mandatory. Every student responded either by rote or by paraphrasing. No deviations in thought or style were accepted. Nonconforming thought, political or military, was justification for a public self-criticism session. Repeated nonconformity was justification for washing out.
Nang learned pistol and rifle marksmanship. He fired SKS and AR-15 carbines, RPD and M-60 machine guns, RPG and M-79 grenade launchers, Soviet and Chinese mortars. By February he could field-strip and reassemble a TT 7.62mm pistol, an AKH-47, and an M-14, all in total darkness. He learned about explosives, mines and booby traps, about target acquisition, approach and engagement. He learned to use radios, read maps, plan village attacks. With mock explosives he practiced tactics for destroying American tanks and APCs. With heavy machine guns and AA weapons he practiced blowing up small cutouts of Huey helicopters. He learned how to infiltrate and booby-trap fixed installations, which terrorist acts drew the most attention and thus were the most effective. And he learned to spy.
Through it all he received constant indoctrination. “ ‘Political work in the ranks,’ ” Guoshen quoted Vo Nguyen Giap, “ ‘is of the first importance. It is the soul of the army.’ ”
He was not there to learn a new political ideology, but to learn how to teach political ideology, how to indoctrinate, to establish propaganda networks, to teach others to teach. At the age of twelve, Nang was a soldier, a combat leader, a spy. Now he would be capable of being an instructor, a political officer. Of the seventy-eight Krahom boys in his company who began the training, by February forty had suffered self-criticism sessions, twenty had washed out. Nang suffered neither. He learned to be sly, obedient, a fanatically militant nationalist Communist.
“When you spy,” Guoshen whispered to Nang, “you must smile. You’ve learned not to smile. That’s for soldiers. You’re the elite of the elite, a trained leader. Be flexible. When you mix with civilians in unliberated areas, you smile like them. That way you are invisible.” Nang smiled for Guoshen. The Chinese boy trembled.
Throughout March and April Guoshen spent extra hours each day with Nang. “Don’t think,” Guoshen said to him one evening, “of only the war. Think beyond.”
“How are men led to abandon their pasts?” Nang responded.
“The quickest way is to remove them from their pasts. In a blink of the eye, when a peasant is moved to a collective, he transforms. He ceases being absorbed with his self and his family and immediately recognizes a new allegiance to the collective and the Party.”
“And”—Nang spoke quietly, for this question, if asked during class, would bring a criticism—“how can you tell that it works?”
“Nang,” Guoshen whispered, “behind closed doors, some people will attempt to revert to old ways.”
“Then,” Nang said, “why not remove the doors?”
Another night, Guoshen and Nang discussed communism and the economics of rice first. “ ‘Revolution and production,’ ” Guoshen repeated a slogan of the Cultural Revolution, “ ‘will solve all problems.’ Peasants know how to grow rice.” About South Viet Nam Guoshen told Nang, “Their leaders are too corrupt to hold off the North, and the Americans won’t stay there forever.” He produced a lesson sheet. “See. On 12 November last year, Clark Clifford, the American secretary of defense, declared that if the Thieu clique won’t join the peace talks, the U.S. will conduct unilateral negotiations. Cambodia’s only chance for true independence is to befriend China. Sihanouk knows, but he’s fat. He splashes perfume on himself like a ‘broken shoe.’ ”
“That’s why we’ll destroy him,” Nang answered. An eerie glint possessed Nang’s face. He was not thinking about Sihanouk or the Americans, but about yuons.
“Beware of American mercenaries,” Guoshen went on. “They’re savages! Ugh. They’re hairy. And ugly with big noses. If they capture young boys they sell them to capitalist men for sex. I’ve seen pictures. And when their bombers are shot down and the pilots captured, they confess they search for hospitals to bomb. In Viet Nam they’ve been known to roast children alive, before their parents, and then eat them.”
Nang’s battalion went through three phases of training. At the end of the first and the second, sixty percent of the cadets remaining were graduated and returned to Cambodia. Of the several hundred boys, almost all products of Khmer Krahom training camps in Cambodia, who began the course, fewer than fourteen percent remained for the last phase. These boys were trained in escape methods, clandestine communication, sabotage and assassination. During a martial arts class Nang puffed himself up. “You are a chameleon,” Guoshen noted. Nang looked stronger and older than the other Khmer boys. “A chameleon or a king cobra.” Guoshen laughed. “Go small again.” To Guoshen’s delight Nang deflated, looked slight; impish, even frail. Again Guoshen laughed. Nang smiled pitifully.
The elite were trained in disguise and deception until each had a repertoire of possible acts—orphan, escapee from the liberated zone, cripple. Nang added to those his perfected act as a mute Mountaineer. He learned new techniques of torture. For learning he was promised new privileges. They need not have promised him anything.
He became more proficient at killing by knife, pistol and booby trap. He barely recognized he had a background or family. He owed no one other than the Movement, which Khmer cadremen were now calling the Organization, or Angkar. To the fraternal nations joined in the Communist International and to Angkar, Nang owed total obedience and his life. He considered himself a Marxist and a Maoist, even while he knew he first was Kampuchean.
The last month of ideological training in China had emphasized the fraternal nature of all socialist movements. The section leader was a Chinese colonel, the executive officer a Viet Namese lieutenant colonel, the main lecturer a Khmer major. Each day a nationalist from a different country addressed the class about the struggle of his people.
In those final weeks Nang spent his evenings copying or paraphrasing sections of Mao’s little red book, On People’s War, into a notebook of his own.
War is the highest form of struggle...
Make wiping out the enemy’s effective strength our main objective; do not make holding or seizing a city or place our main objective. Holding [territory] is the outcome of wiping out the enemy...
In every battle concentrate an absolutely superior force (two, three, four and sometimes five or six times the enemy’s strength), encircle the enemy forces completely, strive to wipe them out thoroughly and do not let any escape from the net....
Although inferior in numbers we shall be absolutely superior in every specific campaign; this ensures victory...
Fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not sure of winning...
The imperialists, headed by the United States, are attempting to invade and subvert socialist countries. Therefore, the revolutionary people of the socialist countries must conscientiously study Chairman Mao’s theory of people’s war and get a good grasp of this weapon, the sharpest of ideological weapons for smashing the schemes of capitalist restoration and for consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat...
Then on the last day Nang bowed to the Viet Namese lieutenant colonel. “Where is Bok Roh, the Giant?” Nang smiled.
“Ah,” the lieutenant colonel sighed, pleased the Khmer boy knew of the Mountaineer who aided the NVA. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“I have a gift for him,” Nang replied.
“A lady chicken, perhaps,” the colonel laughed, referring to the Jarai legend of the Giant, Bok Roh, from which the large Mountaineer had taken his name.
“Perhaps,” Nang said pleasantly. The desire for revenge had not dissipated over the long months of training though it had changed. No longer was avenging his sister, Yani, or the tribal girl, Sraang, the main passion driving him. He was barely able to bring images of the girls to mind. His father’s murder, too, was no longer paramount. Revenge had gained its own life, its own justification. Revenge for the sake of revenge.
“You just missed him,” the officer said. “He’s gone again to the South. You’ll find him there.”
In May 1969 Chhuon returned to fields he had not worked in a decade. Stooped, he slogged in the fertile mud planting new seedlings—backstep, plant; backstep, plant; row after row. The rains had begun again, two weeks late this year. The brown of the paddies slowly took a green tinge. By midmonth they were the wonderful fresh light green of new growth, new life, new promise. Stooped, Chhuon did not think. Stooped with the rich organic smell whelming his sinuses, he did penance. Stooped, his forty-five-year-old back, unused to long bent hours, ached yet he repressed the pain until his day’s section was planted. Alongside his cousin and neighbor, Sam, he labored like Khmers of a hundred and a thousand years earlier. In his mind, he had returned to the very root of Khmer life. From there, he told himself, he would view the changes in his family, village, region and country; from there he would judge himself; from there he would discover how.
Since the planting of the last main crop Phum Sath Din had changed dramatically. The closing of the Mekong at Siambok in October had shaken the Northeast. Sok, her sister and the women of other families urged their husbands to abandon their homes, their villages, their ancestral interments and move south or west. Both Chhuon’s sisters, Voen in Phnom Penh and Moen in Battambang, offered them space in their homes, yet Chhuon, like most of the men of Phum Sath Din, resisted, procrastinated, postponed the decision, lingering on reports, discussing the possible truth of rumors endlessly.
Each new thought seemed to produce a new rumor. Each real or imagined report of terrorism in the cities, or of entire villages being burned or simply falling behind the line of no information, or of isolated farms, like Keng Sambath’s, being swallowed by an ambiguous advancing front propelled by anonymous aggressors, elevated the tension in the village. Entire families left. The population dropped from 420 to below 300. The pagoda school closed as the first to leave were those with young children. The marketplace dwindled. Stalls at the ends of the row never filled and the habit of daily purchase of perishables gradually faded, replaced by essential gatherings on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month. And yet Phum Sath Din remained without incident until Chhuon’s brawl with the tinker.
At the end of the day Chhuon straightened his back. The pain was immense. He could no longer repress it. Nor could he suppress his thoughts, keep them from rising to conspicuousness. “Ahh,” he sighed.
“It’s been a long while since we worked together, eh?” Sam grinned. “Your back’s not used to it.”
“Each day it gets stronger.” Chhuon smiled back.
“When I look at the paddy like this,” Sam said, “I feel very good.”
“I feel good too,” Chhuon answered. “I could plant more rows. I could walk backwards until I fell on a yuon.” Chhuon paused. He looked over the richness of the land breathed deeply. “Why aren’t you going?” he asked Sam, not looking at his cousin.
“The best paddies are now mine to plant,” Sam answered. “Besides, where would I go? It’s only Ry and me and her mother. The children are grown. So what if things change? But you, why don’t you go? You still have Sakhon in your house.”
“The best paddies are now mine, too.” Chhuon laughed, yet mixed with the laugh was sarcasm. “Besides, someday they’ll come to me.”
The men walked the dikes to the edge of the village, then parted. Chhuon looked at the sky, the trees, the ground. As he passed the pagoda he did not lift his eyes but thought instead of his knees which were throbbing and tight with swelling. Before he entered his house he paused, glanced at the tiny angel spirits’ house, now neglected. I must fix it, he thought. Tomorrow. He shuffled to the outdoor washing area where he cleaned himself, where Sok met him with tea. He smiled, again a mixed, charged smile. He thanked the old woman, four years his junior, in proper fashion, sipped the tea then moaned and lamented, “My knees are so bad tonight I think I’ll need help up the stairs.”
“And your back?” Sok whispered.
“Terrible,” he said. Since he had returned full-time to the fields the household nightly ritual had become almost a game. Chhuon listed his ailments; Sok responded by silently assisting him; his mother sympathized, feebly attempting to get herself up until Sok laid a hand on her shoulder and told her to remain; and Peou withdrew to a corner of the central room to play with a small plastic John Deere tractor given to him by Mister Pech.
After a brief rest Chhuon rose, as he did each night, cringed, as he did each night, the pain in his knees and back rifling across his face. “And now,” he said, “a bowl of rice for Kdeb. His spirit needs sustenance. I feel it. His spirit wanders.”
“We should go,” Sok said quietly. “Today I heard...”
“We can’t go,” Chhuon snapped. “How can we go? Kdeb’s spirit...” He shuddered, twisted, a spasm of pain seizing his side.
Sok gave him a small rice bowl for the altar. “We received word today...” she began, but Chhuon interrupted her again.
“What do you put in my tea?” His eyes darted to her then away. He put a hand to his breastbone. “I’m burning up.”
“Your passions are too hot,” his mother said firmly. “The heat rises to your mouth.”
“It’s the damned yuons that rise to my mouth,” Chhuon cursed bitterly. “The damned yuons who are...are...killing me.”
Chhuon placed a small bowl on the altar and lit two incense sticks for Samnang. He tapped a heavy finger on the tabletop. Tapped it seven, eight, ten times. “Blood for blood!” he murmured. He turned, scowled, his face tightened, transformed to a mask. Sok rocked back, aghast. “Blood for blood!” Chhuon repeated louder.
“Vathana sent word...” Sok interjected. She knew it was the one name which could break his deepening trance.
“Yes?” Harsh, questioning.
A slight smile curled Sok’s lips. “You’re going to be a grandfather.”
For a week Nang sat in a whitewashed cave awaiting debriefing. His trip south had not been easy. In the far north of Laos he’d been stranded for weeks when the NVA and Pathet Lao suddenly switched their effort from moving men and materiel south and diverted all their resources to the battle of the Plain of Jars. Despite heavy American air strikes and torrential monsoons the NVA offensive seized the government stronghold at Muong Soui on the western edge of the plateau. In rear areas Nang had listened to reports from soldiers returning from the front. They’d bragged of savage fighting, of victory, of pushing west and cutting Highway 13, of how they were now in striking distance of Vientiane and Luang Prabang.
The tales made Nang itch to be part of a battle, any battle. He’d questioned them with the little Viet Namese he’d learned. How stupid they are, he’d thought. In youthful enthusiasm and naïveté he was certain he could do better. Had they better coordinated their infantry and artillery, they would have been even more successful. Had they used less explosive at each point but doubled the attack points...Oh, he’d thought, to be part of the great victory!
With the itch to fight strong, he’d picked his way down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In southeastern Laos the trail bombings were so heavy they all but closed the route. Twice Nang was caught in areas adjacent to B-52 bomb boxes. As the ground trembled, fear, awe, vengeance had heightened his resolve. Now, too, there were rumors of American bombings of NVA sanctuaries in his country. To be there, he’d thought, to see yuons slaughtered, then to butcher the hairy American savages.
Nang had marched west, with a transportation unit, across the Bolovens Plateau below Saravanto the Mekong. At the river soldiers cut trees, fashioned crude rafts, stacked and tied crates of arms and ammunition, distributing the weight so the craft would have a chance in the rapids. At night rafts were released, unmanned, left to float to the Khong Falls at the border where other units would catch them, unload them, porter the goods around the falls. Then the materiel would be trucked, unmolested, 110 kilometers south to Kratie for further distribution.
Nang had jumped a raft. At Ban Mai a reconnaissance aircraft spotted him, radioed for clearance to fire. He’d slithered between crates, trying to hide. The aircraft flew off. Unknown to Nang, the next day, after eleven hours of seeking clearance, a second U.S. F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber searched the river, but by then Nang had reached Cambodia.
In Cambodia, the Krahom network aided by Khmer Viet Minh transport units expedited Nang’s trip past Stung Treng, Kratie and Kompong Cham, through the outskirts of Phnom Penh, to Kompong Speu. There he waited in the whitewashed cave. Only the most trusted Krahom yotheas and cadre knew how to proceed to Krahom headquarters at Peam Amleang.
In the 1950s the KK established a secret regional headquarters in the craggy pocket on Mount Aural, Cambodia’s highest peak—primary headquarters were in Phnom Penh. In 1963 the primary unit was shifted to the southeast where it coexisted with Viet Cong offices. In 1966 it was moved to Pong Pay Mountain, adjacent to the training school, and was known as the Central Committee at Ratanakiri. As tension between the Krahom and NVA/KVM mounted, the Central Committee headquarters was moved to the old southwest regional site. By 1969 Peam Amleang was a deep-tunneled, camouflaged complex from which the Khmer Krahom military and political hierarchy, the Center, directed the revolution.
Met Sar had been promoted to general. “You shall be my eyes where my eyes cannot see,” he said quietly. “You shall be my ears where my ears cannot hear; my feet where my feet dare not walk.” A fine mist filled the early-morning mountain air. Nang had been brought up the mountain blindfolded, had been grilled by senior cadremen about the People’s Liberation Army School for a week. Met Sar had briefly questioned him and a thin man named Nim had explained to him what had occurred in his absence.
“We no longer call ourselves the Movement,” Nim had said. “We’ve adopted the name Angkar Leou so as not to be coupled with the Communists.” Nim’s voice was machinelike. “We can be more effective this way. Let them think we’re Viet Minh. Or yuon. Or bandits. We’ve attacked in all nineteen provinces since the New Year but the yuons carry the brunt of battle. They die. We grow strong. Let it be.”
“And the Royal forces?” Nang had asked.
“The Prince,” Met Nim had said sarcastically, “is angry. The yuons have detached Ratanakiri. He’s ordered his army to have an offensive spirit. Ha! An offensive spirit. Isn’t that a joke? Not to go on the offensive but...”
“That’s not the problem, Nim,” the firm gentle voice of Met Sar had interrupted, and Nang had snapped erect.
“Oh! No. No, it’s not,” Nim had stuttered.
“Norodom Sihanouk has reestablished relations with coldblooded imperialist aggressors,” Met Sar had said. He’d read from a French newspaper quoting the Prince. “ ‘...the Asian Communists are already attacking us before the end of the Viet Nam War.’ This is a serious development.” Met Sar had paced back and forth. Agitation crept into his tone. “Yuons move ever greater numbers into the interior,” he said. “Americans bomb sanctuaries along the eastern border. As long as that’s secret, the Prince approves. Augh! He too wants the NVA gone. But Hanoi...if they can break the secrecy...this is a nightmare! American escalation presages ground-force intervention. That”—Met Sar had slapped a wall map—“that must be avoided. At the same time, the NVA must be driven out! We need a greater presence in the East. We need spies, scouts. We need greater intelligence.”
“Met Sar,” Nim had addressed the new general, “why not allow them to murder each other?”
“Let them murder each other in Viet Nam,” Sar had grumbled. He’d grabbed his chin, slid his fingers down to his neck. “Hold no illusions,” he had said. “A full-scale fight with the Americans will extend the war for years.” Sar had shaken his head. “Keep them out. We must drive the yuons out...and we must keep out the Americans.”
Nang had risen. “Met Sar,” he’d said, “allow me to recon the front.”
Sar had studied the boy. “Our people are blank posters,” Sar had said quietly. “There will be but one chance to paint their future.” Then he’d left. In a deep pensive mood he’d brooded for days while Nang and the cadre languished.
On 20 May, Sar called for Nang. They sat outdoors, under a canopy of woven branches and vines. “You shall be my eyes where my eyes cannot see,” Sar repeated. “My ears...my feet. Met Nang, you shall walk all Kampuchea.”
Nang looked at Sar, his mentor, his tutor, his guide and sponsor through the political and bureaucratic morass of the growing Movement. Nang’s face lit, keen, infectious, bright-eyed. This man, he thought, this one man is the only man on earth I need to please. “I’m prepared for any sacrifice,” he said pleasantly. “I wish only to be of service to the People.”
“Good.” Met Sar delicately peeled a banana, ate it. The chairs and table of the canopied-office were exquisitely crafted, the ground covered with bamboo mats woven in intricate patterns. Walkways to and from the office were made of bamboo tubes laid perpendicular to the path. Drainage was perfect; even in the heaviest monsoon deluge the feet of general staff officers never got wet.
From their seats Sar and Nang could see the valley below—the low south filled with white clouds, the middle thick with forest, the north end closing and running toward a great peak. A porter brought more tea and a bowl of fresh fruit then disappeared down a walkway into an underground cavern.
“Good,” Met Sar repeated. “Once the country is organized you shall have a well-deserved position.”
Nang puffed his chest like a bird.
“I have determined,” the older man said, “that we can slice up or club to death those who need to be eliminated. Did not your friend Bok Roh do this?” Sar laughed as if he had told a great joke.
“My friend!” Nang was astonished by the officer’s words.
“You remember.” Sar laughed. “You told me all about him your first day at Pong Pay. He’s now your friend, eh?”
“My friend!” Nang repeated. He felt Sar’s power, the power of information, the power of knowing another’s secrets. He hated Sar for his power, yet he admired him, wanted to emulate his every stratagem.
“Bok Roh...” Sar laughed. His eyes were riveted on Nang, gauging Nang’s response. “Do you know where to look for him?”
“No.” Nang’s voice was flat.
“He is not a soldier, you know.” Nang did not speak. “He’s a tool.” Sar laughed. He sensed Nang’s tension. “They use him,” Sar said. “He’s very smart but he’s only a smart tool. Your story of him was not the first. Do you wish to get him?”
“I wish only to serve.” Nang lowered his eyes to mask his emotions.
“Ha!” Sar blurted. “It doesn’t matter. We will not rely on tools, or supplies, from anyone,” he said. “It is the will of Angkar Leou. Victory to the Brotherhood of the Pure.”
“Victory,” Nang repeated.
Again Met Sar said, “You shall be my eyes...my ears...my feet....You shall walk the entire country. Report to me what you see, all you hear. That shall be your mission. You have been trained to collect intelligence. You are an agent for the Center. We must know all.”
Nang’s face lit, his eyes glistened.
“Sihanouk is stirring about Chinese supplies entering at Sihanoukville. Go there first. See what is happening. Make your report. Then find the sanctuaries. And if you find Bok Roh...study him, eh? He may yet be helpful to us. But, Met Nang, don’t concentrate on just tools. Tell me, too, what the Americans are doing.”
The main road of Neak Luong was a bustle of activity when Chhuon arrived. Cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles vied with bicycles and buffalo-drawn carts for rain-drenched space along riverside quays or land-side construction sites. Old, traditional wood-and-bamboo stilt houses were being replaced by structures of brick, block and mortar. The river, too, was crowded: tugs, barges and large river freighters dwarfed small fishing boats and sampans. Jacaranda trees, thick with clusters of blue-purple flowers, seemed sad, trapped between machines and concrete beneath the leaden sky.
Chhuon walked hesitantly. He was eager yet timid. He had come to Neak Luong with Cheam, the latter to see Pech Lim Song on business, Chhuon to see his daughter. Outside the four-story apartment building he stopped. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, blew the smoke before him and rebreathed the cloud. A young man, his head down in the rain, bumped Chhuon. As he stepped around, he looked up at the man in rural dress and said, “Excuse me, Grandfather.”
Chhuon smiled and bowed as the young man marched on. Grandfather, he thought. Yes. Soon. Pretty soon. Six months. Six months I haven’t seen her. How she’ll have changed.
“Un moment,” Vathana called in French when Chhuon knocked. He could hear her talking on the telephone, all in French, about shipping schedules. Her voice sounded harried.
Chhuon let himself in. The apartment was impeccably decorated. Without the wedding crowd it was spacious. Chhuon stood by the door. Vathana sat at a delicate mahogany desk in what had been intended as a dining el but was now her office. Beside her were open file carriages, before her an open folder. She did not turn around but continued insisting that the price of something was much too high. Chhuon glanced into the kitchen. A radio was on the refrigerator. He looked through the doorway into the bedroom. There was a television set on a small stand by an immense Western-style bed. In the living room, on a rosewood table, there was a closed photo album. Chhuon turned back to Vathana. Above her desk was the large framed picture of Norodom Sihanouk Cheam had given as a wedding present. His eyes swept the room. Vaguely he approved the large photo, admired the well-organized desk and files, yet he felt much of the furnishings were material triviality. He glanced at the closed photo album then raised his eyes to his daughter’s back. How beautiful, he thought. Then, She doesn’t look pregnant. Then, Her hair is black as monsoon clouds. Finally, Still she wears the white dress of mourning. That pleased him. Others may have forgotten Samnang and Mayana but not Vathana. He watched, now with pleasure, as she pulled the Buddha statuette from her bodice and rubbed it between her thumb and fingers. It amused him that she had exchanged the cotton cord for a gold chain.
Vathana argued on. Chhuon stood by the door like a delivery boy waiting to be acknowledged by an important feudal lord. “Oui. Oui. Adieu.” She closed the phone, turned and gasped. “Papa! I thought it was Teck.”
“You are in good health?” Chhuon smiled broadly.
Vathana launched into an excited prattle of greeting and reacquaintance, as if she hadn’t talked to anyone in months. As she chatted she prepared a buffet for her father who barely got in a word. She spoke French at first, a habit she’d fallen into in Neak Luong, but soon she switched to a beautiful Khmer full of sound redundancies which pleased Chhuon immensely. Finally she ran down. She hung her head low and whispered, “I’m pregnant.”
Chhuon reacted to her tone. “But that’s wonderful.” His eyes sparkled as they had not since early August. “Your mother will come and stay to help.”
“Papa,” Vathana whispered. She pulled the statuette and massaged it. “I’m so afraid.” It was difficult for her. Traditional belief held it unhealthy for a pregnant woman to talk of her worries. “I’m so vulnerable, but how can I stop this work?”
“Your uncle tells me you’re the best businesswoman on the river,” Chhuon said. It was an attempt to reassure her but also to divert the conversation from fears Chhuon himself did not know how to handle. “Better than all the men,” he said. “Cheam says you’re the only one who doesn’t lie.”
“Buddha forbids one to use words to conceal the truth,” she said quietly. “But to be pregnant and to work. I’m so vulnerable to spirits. What if something should happen to the baby?”
“And Teck?” Chhuon’s words hardened.
“He says he’s an Epicurean.”
“He’s what?”
“His only concern is his own happiness.”
“He...” Chhuon clenched his fists. “...he cannot be that...that....His father...”
“Mister Pech is wonderful. I’ve learned so much. Especially who must be paid.”
“Does his mother help?”
“She’s like Lady Monique Sihanouk,” Vathana said, an odd smile on her face.
“She’s good to you?”
“She bought all the furniture. She buys Teck’s clothes. She shops every day...in Phnom Penh. She won’t live here. And she doesn’t approve of my running the company.”
“Vathana”—Chhuon addressed her as an adult—“you must pay someone to ship, yes? Like I paid road donations?” Vathana nodded and Chhuon added bitterly, “Don’t pay the yuons. Even five hundred riels is too much.”
“Five hundred!? Papa! Try five hundred thousand in three months.”
“Five hundred thous...”
“Yes. And if I change from exporting rice to moving palm oil it will cost more. It will cost a large bonjour just to acquire the tanks. But there’s more money in palm oil than in rice.”
“You sound like Mister Pech,” Chhuon said. A sharpness crept into his voice. “Does he tell you how to think about yuons?”
“Every day the radio’s full of reports,” Vathana said. “Every day Samdech Euv has new activities to report but his talk is so general, unless you have family or workers in those areas...”
“Does he say what is happening to the Northeast? Do the people cringe? Are they as infuriated as I am?”
“Papa,” Vathana said carefully, “no one cringes. No one knows. There are bombings in the East but no one seems to care. If you tell them, they don’t believe you. I tell them I come from the Northeast and every day more of the country is lost. They look at me as if I were from another world. They say, ‘Rice is fifteen percent more than last year. You merchants cheat us.’ ”
“They don’t know?!” Chhuon was aghast.
“They don’t want to know,” Vathana said. “They’re mostly like Teck. Teck says the war will soon end. He says it’ll never reach here.” She paused. She felt she’d said too much, revealed, too much about her husband, her mother-in-law and her new city. She sensed that her father was very hurt. “But...but Papa, you haven’t told me how you are. Uncle Cheam says you work the paddies with Cousin Sam.”
Chhuon dropped his face. His complexion seemed to pale before Vathana’s eyes. “I no longer know the right way to live,” Chhuon said. He might have said, “I fear I’m crazy,” for in Khmer society the loss of way was considered borderline insanity. “Some days my body is like a stranger to me,” he confessed. “On those days I work very hard so the pain will be very bad and I’ll know that...” He stopped, looked up. Vathana’s eyes were tearing. I could tell her of the dream I had the night before the trip. He shook his head. “I feel like our family is no longer connected. Alone we have no meaning.”
They sat quietly for some time. Chhuon ate from the dishes Vathana brought, though for herself she ate only the traditional foods for mothers-to-be. Chhuon felt more and more enclosed in the apartment as day passed to dusk. He sat for a while looking at the photo album—mostly pictures of the wedding—and he was surprised to find not a single photo of himself.
“Where’s your husband?” Chhuon asked his daughter as darkness settled on Neak Luong.
“He’s out,” Vathana answered.
“Does he return?” Chhuon asked pointedly.
“Yes. He’ll...he’ll...”
“Does he hurt you?”
“Papa, how do I keep Teck from embarrassing himself and the family when he’s without a self?”
Chhuon looked at his daughter but did not speak. He lifted his teacup, sipped, contemplated the question. He understood self to mean something different from what Westerners might. In Vathana’s use, self first meant Teck’s spirit interconnected with the family spirit encompassing past, present and future generations. For her to say he has no self did not mean he lacks physical existence or ego, but that his body is without a soul, spiritually adrift on earth. In Western terms, Teck had immense ego.
Vathana fidgeted as Chhuon sipped his tea. For Chhuon the role of sage was pleasing. In Phum Sath Din his family no longer brought him their fears and problems. He thought of his own father and drew strength from the thought. He thought of his grandfathers, especially his father’s father from whom so many sought advice. “Someday,” Chhuon began, “he will change. He is young, but he will change because he comes from a proper family. He will become like his father.” Chhuon felt the explanation was inadequate. He was about to say it is a question of searching for the self and not a matter of embarrassment but he became confused and overwhelmed with thoughts of himself, adrift. He could not further answer his daughter. He shut his eyes and wished to pray but he could not pray. A terrible burning surged in his chest. Finally he answered, “When the yuons leave, Cambodia’s self will return. Now I must go.”
Nang crept forward like a rat. He froze, darted forward under the heavy pipeline which ran from the pier to the huge storage tanks, froze again. It was his seventh day in Sihanoukville. The air in the port city was clear below dark turbulent monsoon clouds. The water was greenblack. Until a week before Nang had never seen anything like the coastal city; never smelled anything like it. The entire southern coast was alien. Sea air, away from the oil refineries, smelled different from inland air, felt different. In such air sounds traveled in an unfamiliar way. The sight of distant hills dropping to paddies, then blending into Cambodia’s most industrialized city, which in turn faded to beaches and they to endless water, confused him. The first two days he was not the eyes of Met Sar, not the hardened, highly trained terrorist agent of Angkar Leou, not even the bitter boy who believed his father had been killed by Viet Namese, but simply a rural Khmer child set agog by the sight of industries and luxuries he did not know, had never even imagined. Had his contacts not brought him back to reality he might have lost himself amid the ships and wharves and sought a totally different adventure.
From beneath the pipeline Nang counted the new ships in the harbor and at the piers. Two more Soviet and one Chinese freighter, he noted. Plus the tanker. And the ship with the blue triangle on a split white and red field. And one with no markings. “You can read their flags or their stacks,” Met Ang, Nang’s senior contact, had told him. “If you don’t know the nations, remember the pattern. I’ll know.”
“You’re easy on them.” Nang had searched the young man’s face.
“We live here. We do the job.”
“How do you know what’s unloaded?”
“Everyone knows,” Ang had answered. “Ammunition is marked ‘Goods in transit’; rice and fish for the sanctuaries are labeled ‘For export to South Viet Nam.’ ”
Nang crept farther down the pipeline toward the pier. He carefully noted the pipe unions and moorings and mentally set charges where they would do the most destruction. The first day in the patrolled area the activity so dazzled him he saw only the movement of men and machines without cataloguing cargo. Now, as the giant crane at a far pier dipped into the hold of a ship and brought forth crates or pallets of bags or boxes, Nang estimated the contents and added to his mental inventory. He noted which pallets were placed before the crane for the massive forklift trucks to carry to large open warehouses; which pallets were placed to the side where men broke the wares down immediately and dispersed them either to smaller forklifts, which brought them to buildings where the doors opened only at their arrival, or directly into the backs of covered military trucks.
At another pier the side of a freighter was open. Empty trucks disappeared into the ship then reemerged laden with concealed cargo. “If the flag is red with five gold stars,” Ang had said, “then we’ll have the exact manifest and we’ll take our share. But if it’s Soviet, we need to count to confirm our lists.”
“And the goods...” Nang had questioned.
“You watch. One third goes on Royal Army trucks. One third goes to Haklee warehouses where only the Viet Namese are allowed. One third goes directly to commercial trucks. It’s easiest to bribe the Royal Army drivers. Then we supply ourselves. Yuons are hard to bribe. Commercial trucks, if they don’t pay road fees, can be ambushed.”
Nang put his ear to the pipeline expecting to hear fluid gurgling. Instead he heard the high-pitched hum of pumps. Below him, on the pier, were a few idle men. The pipeline was hooked to an offshore tanker via thick black hoses supported by a series of large floats. Nang noted the flag—three horizontal bands, red, white with three green stars, then black (Iraq). Ang will tell me, he thought, and Sar will know.
Through the afternoon and into the evening Nang remained beneath, beside, then atop the pipe. In the dull light he turned, looked up to the distant hills where huge villas shone like small cities. Nang contemplated the delivery system, the lax security of the port area, the obvious wealth of the royal officials in charge. It’s safe, he thought, because all profit. He would put that in his report. He squatted on the pipe. In his mind he formulated a plan for disruption, for total destruction of the entire facility. That too he would send to Sar. Nang noted weak points, not only of the government security forces, the Chinese and the North Viet Namese, but also of the small squad of Krahom yotheas and spies led by Met Ang. Later, he knew, he would recommend Met Ang be eliminated.
Like a wraith Nang rose, walked barefooted, exposed, up the pipe to where it passed through the chainlink fencing. He jumped off, walked to the gate and exited, a rag-clothed child somehow misplaced on the pier.
“Hey, where you going?” A uniformed man emerged from the small guardhouse.
“I look for Bok Roh,” Nang answered in Jarai-tainted Khmer.
“Who? What?”
“My father,” Nang said, shrinking, looking no more than eight.
“Eh, you can’t go in there, kid.”
Instead of fleeing, Nang walked to the man. “Are those the trucks to Bokor?”
The guard eyed him warily.
“My father driver,” Nang said.
As the sun set Chhuon followed his cousin into Phum Sath Din’s nearly idle marketplace. In their left hands they carried their weeding hoes, in their right, curved-bladed rice knives. They walked slowly past the many stalls no longer maintained, past the few stalls with shabby common wares. Gone were the many food stalls with the vast variety of fish, chickens, vegetables, fruits and nuts; gone were the small tools and appliances; gone were the familiar faces of townspeople, peasants from surrounding farms and the tailor and doctor from Stung Treng who used to come twice a month, faces seemingly unchanged for a generation; gone all and replaced by a few suspicious outside vendors who posed as tinkers or weavers. In the market, food had become secondary. Beneath the pots and pans and hammers, the tinkers sold handguns and ammunition. If paid the right price, they could obtain nearly any small arm or crew-served weapon in use anywhere in Southeast Asia. Behind the bolts of cloth the weavers bought and sold information.
Chhuon stopped in the road before a tinker’s stall. The man was small, petite as a preadolescent girl. Chhuon watched as he nimbly stacked and crated his product. “They’re like vultures,” Sam whispered to Chhuon. “They appear when a village dies.”
“Blood for blood,” Chhuon answered quietly. His eyes glazed over as he spoke. He had never used the phrase outside his home, and there only once since the first time he’d shocked his wife. “Blood for blood,” he repeated to Sam. He did not say it with the vengeance he’d used mentally ten thousand times, nor did he give it the charged emotion he felt. He said it almost apologetically. Still Sam understood.
Then Chhuon repeated it more loudly, boisterously. Two women shoppers stopped. The tinker turned and looked at him. The weaver took silent note. “Blood for blood, eh tinker?” Chhuon snickered. “Have you had a good day?” he asked in Viet Namese.
“A slow day,” the petite man answered pleasantly in Khmer.
“You are Viet, yes?” Chhuon prodded in Viet Namese.
“My mother was half Viet Namese, half Chinese,” the tinker responded so only Chhuon could hear. A little louder he said, “My father is Khmer from Kompong Thom.”
Suddenly Chhuon shouted, “Your mother is a pig.” Then he lunged at the tinker. Sam lunged, grabbed Chhuon. The tinker darted back. The women and other merchants startled as if shaken by a powerful concussion. “Yuons are pigs,” Chhuon snarled, his voice harsh, low. Then he rocked back, laughed.
Sam let Chhuon go. “Let’s get on.” He pushed his cousin. “Viet or not, this tinker...”
“I want to look at him.” Chhuon seethed. “I want to see if he killed my son.”
“I’m just a tinker,” the petite man said timidly. “From Kompong Thom. I know nothing of your son. I’m sorry if you had a great loss.”
“Ha!” Chhuon’s laugh was short, brusque. “The Prince of Death must be served, eh tinker!?” Sam put a hand back on Chhuon’s arm. Chhuon flicked it off. “Eh, tinker?” he shouted. “I hope your wares serve the Prince well.” The tinker again shied back. He did not know this man, nor did he know the local merchants, shoppers or other alien traders who had begun to cluster. Suddenly Chhuon thrust his hoe into the stall, crashing stacked pots to the ground. With a flick of his wrist he overturned a wooden box, exposing three pistols wrapped in clear plastic. He hooked one with the hoe, flipped it back to himself and caught it before the tinker could recover. Chhuon stuck his rice knife under his left arm, and while still wielding the hoe, tore the plastic from the pistol. He grasped the weapon—slowly, deliberately, he shook it as one might shake a threatening fist. “Let this kill yuons!” he snarled crazily. “Let this honor the Prince”—he hacked the air with the pistol—“as it mangles Viet Namese.”
In the next stall the weaver smiled inwardly.
Before Nang was arrested on his second day in Bokor, before he was beaten and led to the cliffs, he secreted himself in Ang’s hideout, wrote his report, sealed it and sent it by KK runner to Met Sar.
“You’ll find in Bokor,” Ang told him while he wrote, “a roadside soup stand before a house with four double pillars holding the porch roof. Ask for red and blue crab soup. Met Hout is senior. But be cautious. Bokor is owned by yuons.”
“Might Bok Roh be there?” Nang had asked.
“Bok Roh!” Ang had stepped back, laughed as if the name were a joke. “That’s only a legend.”
The town of Bokor, on Highway 3 between Sihanoukville and Kampot, sat at the terminus of the Cardamom Mountains where the ridge hooked south and dropped precipitously into the sea. It was controlled by the NVA though a Khmer administration coexisted. During the dry season huge villas, gleaming like jewels set in the 3,500-foot cliff overlooking the town, were crammed with North Viet Namese, Viet Cong, Red Chinese and Soviet officials. Under monsoon skies the villas held only skeleton crews. Beneath the mountain, unseen, the NVA had a massive storage facility. Only bandits and the Krahom underground existed outside the woven net.
“Red and blue crab soup,” Nang said cockily to the woman in the soup stand. He eyed an NVA soldier who openly directed traffic at a nearby intersection. The woman nodded and disappeared. Nang laughed quietly. The trip had been easy. He had stolen a bicycle and chased the Haklee convoy, coming forty kilometers the first day. He had then settled into an elevated jungle thicket from which he counted trucks for ten days. Every day, often three times a day, the same truck convoys passed east below him then returned west, empty. Eight to twelve trucks per convoy, three convoys, two or three trips each day. In the first seven days, 481 truckloads of arms and ammunition passed below him. Then the trucks stopped. Nang waited. Nothing. A few cars. A light truck. Several students on bicycles.
Nang rode to Bokor, a young boy on a bike not unlike others, entering the arms-rich resort as it reeled from new decrees. The balance of power between competing elements, which only weeks before had seemed stable, was now teetering on Norodom Sihanouk’s change of diplomatic tactics—a change perhaps motivated by America’s illegal show of willpower, the secret bombings of border sanctuaries. By May 1969 the North Viet Namese and the Khmer Viet Minh presence in Cambodia was so great, Sihanouk took action. In the first week of the month he announced that Cambodian MiG fighter-bombers had attacked NVA positions in the border area. Then he expressed his interest in reestablishing relations with the United States. Simultaneously, Sihanouk verbally suspended Communist use of the port facilities at Sihanoukville and the first American troops were withdrawn from South Viet Nam. In June, under direct orders from Sihanouk and the prime minister of the new “last-ditch” government, Penn Nouth, Royal Army soldiers seized a large shipment of arms destined for the NVA/VC.
“Red and blue crab soup.” The woman reappeared and whispered, “There’s none here. Try the yellow house with two porches.”
All day Nang was sent from one location to another. His frustration rose. He did not know what had happened at the national level, did not know what new orders had come from Phnom Penh. Finally a young woman whispered to him, “Met Hout has been seized. Go away.”
“I can release him,” Nang said quietly.
The woman looked at the boy and scoffed. “You?”
Nang’s face went rigid. He was too tired to continue the guise. He straightened his back, grew in height to match hers, his shoulders widened, his chest bulged beneath his loose-fitting shirt until the shirt seemed ready to split. The woman’s jaw dropped. She stepped back. “I am Met Nang of Angkar Leou,” he announced. His eyes pierced her. “I am the eyes of Angkar Leou.” Nang’s voice came from deep in his chest. “I am the spirit. I am the sacrifice. Angkar Leou will be obeyed.”
“Come in. Hide here.” The woman flitted nervously. “I’ll gather the others.” She grabbed a market basket and fled.
Nang rifled the house for currency and food. His head jerked at every sound. He stood back from the windows, searched the outside from the dark within. He felt caged. Monsoon dusk settled upon Bokor. No one appeared. Nang needed to make contact, needed information, needed to send and receive word from Sar, from the Center. A feeling of abandonment swept over him. He stepped to a side window, deflated, slid out. Again he looked like an eight-year-old boy.
Night fell. Still no one appeared. “I am the sacrifice,” Nang repeated to himself. “I am the will of Angkar Leou.” His head nodded. He raised it, shook it. Nodded again. He did not wish to sleep. He recited successive creeds he’d learned at the School of the Cruel. He sat at perfect attention. Recited quietly. Nodded and fell asleep.
“Here!” the soldier shouted. “He’s sleeping.”
“Watch it,” the sergeant warned. “He’s probably armed.”
Nang opened his eyes. The day had dawned gray. Then concussion and pain erupted at his abdomen as a soldier’s kick connected. Then, before he could react, a second kick to his kidneys. Someone wired his wrists behind his back. Then he was blindfolded.
“That him?” he heard a soldier ask.
“Yes.” He recognized the young woman’s voice.
“You sure, Sister? He’s just a little kid.”
All morning Nang remained blindfolded and bound. At first they brought him to a building and made him sit, alone, on a cool concrete floor. Nang deflated himself to the total limit of his guise. He was not twelve, not eight, but five. At five he could cry, whimper, whine, talk such nonsense no one could take him seriously. He peed his pants.
“Augh, damn,” a low-level guard said. “Why’re they holding him?”
“They say he’s Khmer Rouge,” a second guard answered.
“If that’s Khmer Rouge,” the first said, “who cares?”
“I want my father,” Nang whined. He cried loudly.
“Shit,” the first guard said. “Why did Sihanouk have to disrupt everything?”
More hours passed. A squad of Royal soldiers pulled Nang from the concrete room, made him march, blindfolded, toward the mountain. He was expert at walking in blackness, at letting his feet guide themselves to firm footings, but he could not show it. Every few meters he stumbled, every few stumbles he fell. His shirt ripped on one fall, he split his forehead on another. Blood trickled down his temple, curled about his cheekbone, ran to his jaw then dripped from the tip of his chin. He cried like a terrified five-year-old. A guard grabbed his upper arm firmly, helped him up and led him. He stumbled again jamming his toes into a step and burst out with a horrible shriek.
“Eh,” the guard grunted. “Listen, Little Brother, I’ll take this off you if you promise to stop screaming.” Then to the others, “I’m going to take the blindfold off.”
Nang whimpered. The guard pried the knotted cloth up over the back of his head. Nang grimaced in pain. He made them stand still as he pretended to let his eyes adjust. Through his squint he counted and sized up the soldiers. It surprised him to see they all wore complete Royal Cambodian uniforms and all were armed with AK-47 assault rifles. They did not look at all like the ragtag national troops he’d seen in the Northeast. Sixty thousand North Viet Namese troops in Cambodia, Nang thought, and Norodom Sihanouk had his best troops chasing little boys. He laughed inwardly and thought, The guards think exactly the same.
The guards seemed somber, too somber for those thoughts. Nang walked grudgingly up the steep path. A faint deep moaning sound came from the mountain as if a syrup-thick wind was pushing through the trees, but there was no wind. They walked past the outer walls of the first villa, then onto a narrow road which wound inward and upward, away from the cliff, past two more villas, neither as expansive as the first. The faint low soughing continued. They followed the road as it curved back, upward, back to the highest and most magnificent villa at the edge of the highest overlook.
Before they reached the upper villa the guards reblindfolded him. They marched him to a small block structure outside the villa walls and threw him into a cell with a dozen blindfolded, bound men. This time Nang did stumble, over a body, and crashed down hard on his face. The door banged shut. Nang whined, “ssshh!” a voice whispered, “listen to see if they go.” Nang froze. For a moment everyone was still. Then breathing began. Nang held his breath. He counted the breathing. Four, five, six. More. Then, from the whisperer, a faint exhale. Nang breathed. He righted himself and sat still. The cell smelled stale, foul. “ssst. don’t remove your blindfold,” the whisperer said. “they’ll hang you for that.”
“I want my father,” Nang whimpered.
“who are you?”
“Y Bhur,” Nang answered.
“ssshh. mountaineer? who’s your father, boy?”
“Y Ksar,” Nang answered. “He drives a truck. I came...”
“No talking in there!” The door screeched. Nang could feel the air first being sucked from the room then rushing back. “Grab that boy.”
“better to die than submit.”
“I want my father,” Nang cried in Jarai.
“Take Mister Hout and those students to the cliff.”
Inside the villa, Nang’s blindfold was removed. The wires at his wrists were loosened, not about the wrist but extended between them. He looked quickly about. The room was sealed, saved one unbarred, unshuttered, unglassed window. Two guards stood by the closed door. A large round yellow man who looked to Nang like Guoshen’s father stood near the window. The man bowed slightly. “They say you are called Comrade Nang,” the man said in Jarai.
“I am Y Bhur,” Nang whimpered.
“If you don’t cooperate you may be killed,” the man said softly. He turned and looked out the window. “Come here,” he said. Nang cowered. “Come here!” Nang approached two steps. Stopped. “I won’t hurt you,” the man said, “unless you refuse to cooperate.” Nang stepped closer to the window. Outside, heavy afternoon rain had begun. Through the rain and mist Nang sensed the wall was an extension of the cliff face. He stepped closer. “Did you know Comrade Hout well?” The interrogator motioned at an angle through the window. Nang looked. The cliff rim formed a large U with the villa on the right and the sheerest and deepest face at the curve. Above the curve four men stood blindfolded and bound. A squad of soldiers stood behind them. The interrogator stuck his hand with a forefinger extended out the window, then flicked his wrist, pointing the finger down. At the cliff a soldier with a long bamboo lance jabbed one man in the back. The man lurched forward, dropped. He screamed. Then all was silent.
“You have committed war crimes,” the interrogator said. “You are subject to punishment as a war criminal.”
Nang’s mind raced. At once he thought he could kill all three men and throw them from the window, confuse them with his child act, withstand any interrogation.
“They say you are Comrade Nang,” the interrogator repeated in Khmer.
“I am Y Bhur, son of Y Ksar,” Nang answered in broken Khmer. “I want my father. He drives a truck for Samdech Euv.”
The interrogator strolled leisurely about Nang, stepped back to the window and flicked his wrist. Another man lurched, screamed. From below an eerie moaning gurgled up the cliff to the window.
“Remove his shirt,” the interrogator ordered. A guard came forward, ripped Nang’s shirt from his back. Even deflated, his hard wiry body could not be mistaken for that of a child. Harshly the yellow man rasped, “Comrade Nang, you will tell me who you are, what your unit is, where you are from. What’s your mission?”
“Honest, Uncle,” Nang pleaded in a mix of Mountaineer and Khmer words and phrases. “I’m not with any unit. I’m with my father. He’s a driver. I’m Y Bhur. Please, Uncle.”
“Don’t give me that ‘Uncle’ dung. Your scars say you’re a soldier.” The interrogator grabbed Nang by the hair and forced his head out the window. The vertical drop was a hundred meters. The interrogator sliced his free hand horizontally through the air. At the cliff two soldiers grabbed a man as a third soldier slashed his abdomen open. In the gray of stones and rain and sky the student’s belly burst red. A scream reached the window seemingly disconnected from the torture. “I want to be your friend, Nang. You must cooperate.” Moaning now came from both below and across.
“I am Y Bhur,” Nang answered in a firm voice. “Bok Roh killed my father, Y Ksar! I heard he’s in Bokor. I’ve come to kill him.”
“Bok Roh!?” The interrogator backed away. First one guard, then both, began to laugh. “Bok Roh is a fairy tale.”
“Bok Roh is a yuon agent,” Nang spat. “He killed my whole village.”
The interrogator smacked Nang’s face with the back of his hand. “You called yourself Met Nang,” the round man said angrily. Again he grabbed Nang’s hair, jerked him to the window smashing his head against the frame. “I don’t have time for your games.” He pointed out the window and flicked his finger again and the whisperer was jabbed. He fell to his knees at the rim. The lancer jabbed him repeatedly. He squirmed, blindfolded, bound. His right leg fell over. He kicked it up, swung it back toward his unseen attacker. Nang zoomed in on the struggle. The soldier caught the kicking leg with the lance point. On contact he thrust. The whisperer, his own force kicking against the lance, spun his torso onto the edge. Slowly, he slid backwards, seemingly trying to hook his heels on the rim, then he fell away. No scream. No moaning. In the last seconds Nang shifted his eyes to the squad at the cliff. Only the lancer watched. The others had turned away.
Nang was blindfolded again. The interrogator left. The two guards beat him with their fists, though they beat him lackadaisically for they saw him as he claimed to be, a young Mountaineer child searching for a fairy-tale character who had killed his father. Nang bore the blows without reaction, without sound. He had not been so beaten since the first Krahom school and he’d almost forgotten the pleasure of withstanding a beating, of beating the torturer with utter passivity.
They threw him back in the block cell outside the villa. He listened as they left, then counted the breathing of his cellmates. Eight.
“brothers, do any of you know where is bok roh?” Nang whispered in Jarai.
No one answered. He repeated the question in Khmer. A quiet answer: “i’ve heard he’s on the border at bu ntoll.”
Nang sat forward. He bent his knees, placed his eyes on the knees and began to rub the blindfold back and forth, up and down. The cloth was very tight. Slowly he was able to raise one corner enough so a crack of light entered. He worked the other side. The pressure hurt his eyeballs. He tilted his head back. He could see. Nang put his head down on his knees and rested. Then he forced his arms down, his buttocks up between his wrists. His back bent like a bow. He forced his wrists forward to under his knees. There he was able to loosen the wires.
“Bring them all,” a voice commanded.
Bu Ntoll, Nang thought. Bu Ntoll, the border sanctuary. He slid his hands under his ass and back to position.
The nine prisoners were led to the edge of the cliff. Nang kept his head down. He stumbled. Was lifted, prodded forward. Ceremoniously each was read a short, identical statement finding each guilty of war crimes and condemning each to death. Nang was seventh. He kept his head down. He breathed with his mouth open so he could hear and place the others, prisoners and guards.
“Tuay Teng,” the squad leader said.
“No!” The first man in line screamed. The sound of the lancer’s lunge. Then “Aaaa...” a fading scream. Silence.
“Hang Houk,” The lancer’s jab. No scream. A dull concussion as meat formed to rock with force.
“Vouch Voen.”
“Please.” A woman’s voice. “Please,” the woman begged.
Nang lifted his head. It was almost dark. He turned toward the woman. Below the cloth he could see the guards’ feet facing away, see the heavy vegetation and forest beyond. The lancer jabbed the woman in the spine. She shrieked.
Instead of knocking her forward, the soldier had impaled her with his spear. “Damn,” the lancer muttered. A dirty kill. As he stepped forward, about to put his boot in her back and yank out the lance, Nang spun. He snapped his arms outward. The wire unraveled. Vouch Voen shrieked madly as the soldier struggled with the lance. Nang sprang, a bound coil released, toward the forest. Guards caught turning back toward the entangled lancer and his victim first saw only a streak. Then one spun and opened fire. Nang dove half blind into trees, raced low on all fours deeper and deeper into the thickets. He ripped at the blindfold. The squad leader shouted. Shots cracked. The remaining prisoners were hurled off the cliff without hesitation. Screams. Silence. Moans filled the canyon. Nang slithered between, over, under vines and brush. Darkness settled. He raced on. There was no sound of pursuit.’
Bu Ntoll, he thought. I will send the next report from Bu Ntoll.
“Madam, what would you have us do with him?”
“Why did you insist on showing it to her?”
“She insists on knowing everything we do. Madam?”
Vathana stared at the remains between the barge captain and the crewman. “Perhaps,” the captain said in French, “I should have fed it to the crabs.”
Vathana shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “It is proper to have brought him here. You notified the authorities?”
“God!” The crewman cussed lowly, rolled his eyes to the sky.
“No, madam. We didn’t wish to be slowed.”
“He tried to board?”
“There were eight. Plus those firing from the bank. The others fled when Sarath fired and killed this one.”
Vathana bent to see better. The body was mangled. An arm was ripped off, both legs were broken and folded in horrifying positions. Flies swarmed above a ragged chest hole. Vathana straightened. “He’s so young.”
“They all looked young, madam. They all wore these checked kramas.”
“He’s not even as old as Samnang,” Vathana said absently. Involuntarily she grimaced, squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She shuddered, scrunched her shoulders toward her neck, pulled her shawl tight against the heavy afternoon rain.
“Madam...”
Vathana took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, opened her eyes. “What did Sarath fire at him to cause this?”
“An RPG. Kot hit him too. With the machine gun. What would you have—”
“Wrap him in this.” Vathana handed the captain her shawl. “Have Sarath and Kot take him to the pagoda.” Without the wrap Vathana’s abdomen bulged conspicuously.
“No good,” Sarath whispered to Kot. He had retreated to the sandbag wall about the pilothouse. “The baby will be born like it.”
“Maybe,” Kot whispered.
“We’ll go too,” Vathana said to the barge captain. “We must pray for his spirit. And ours.”