FOR MORE THAN A year Vathana had existed in the gulag of Sangkat 117. It was the time of the great starvation, the second famine. But to call it a year is very odd. Time crumbled. There is no time in a gulag. For a while Vathana made daily trips to the fertilizer factory but then she was allowed to return to the fields. She was expected to tell all. She told no one.
In the gulag all people were now to eat in the communal dining place, but there was room for only half and rations for only half. The healthiest people hustled from the fields to gain a place in line, the weakest stumbled and fell and died. Midline was a place of shoving, cutting, prodding. Yotheas encouraged it until it became tiresome. Then they bashed people with their clubs. Each day people became more desperate; each night the rice riot became worse. Some nights the yotheas announced there would be no rice and the people would have to “make do.” Always they blamed enemies. “The rice shipment we expected was seized by imperialist saboteurs. Anyone caught hiding rice will be severely punished.”
As the famine deepened cadre changed, first at srok level, then at khurn. The newest cadre were the most cruel. The population of the commune rose with new deportees, then fell because of “natural causes.” In August 250 people died of starvation in Sangkat 117; in September, 300. More people came, more died. Two communes were combined and together totaled 12,000 workers. Then a mobile youth brigade of 2,000 was force-marched toward Battambang or Siem Reap. No one knew for certain. With it went Mey’s eldest daughter. In October rations were cut further. Now, in the center of thousands of hectares of rice fields, the ration for an adult full-time field worker was seventy kernels of corn per day. Other adult workers—mat weavers, tool makers—received thirty-five. For nearly 10,000 people the enforcers, chiefs and controllers allowed but ten children to be on fishing detail. Foraging was prohibited. October’s death count stopped at 400 but there were more.
Robona and Vathana were frail, Amara was the weakest. All were distraught. “I went to Met Rama,” Amara said to her sister and cousin. The three lay on mats on the raised floor of the hut. Everywhere about them, under them, falling on them, was water. It was the time of the heaviest rains, the time the sparsely manned cadres had the least control over the people. “I said, Amara’s lips quivered, “Brother, we must have food.”
“Did he answer?” Vathana asked. Others in the hut took note of their speech and the three women huddled closer and lowered their voices.
“he said it is his order to see each person has one milk can of rice each day. but he said there is no rice. i said, ‘then let us eat the forest.’ he answered he would not stop us but he was not the security enforcer but nava was. i kissed his feet and left, tomorrow one of us must get food, you’re the strongest, we’ll tell the mekong you are ill.”
The next day the two sisters went to work. Vathana lay moaning on her mat until all the women except the old mat weavers left. Then she rolled to her knees and slowly crawled to the doorless doorway. Purposely she made her belches loud as if she were about to vomit. The old women eyed her, shied back, pretended not to notice. Another one nauseous from overexertion and starvation, from dysentery or other diseases. Another one probably to die in a day or two. Best not to get to know her. What could one do?
Vathana backed to the door, let herself slowly down into the water. It came to midthigh. She rolled her skirt up and stumbled away. The area north of the hut was intermittent forest, empty of fields, of people. She came upon a path and followed it. The rain came hard all day. The sky and land and vegetation blurred in their grayness. Here she picked a water lily stalk, broke it, chewed it to mush though her gums seemed barely able to keep her teeth in place. She swallowed it knowing it would have been okay cooked, fearing raw it would make her stomach swell. She came to a banana tree with no fruit. She picked a young leaf and again chewed. Her experience with Kpa, Le and Sam helped her forage but in her dazed and feeble state the land seemed picked clean. Then attached to a large lily she spied a snail. Her eyes darted about ensuring that no one saw. She snatched it and stuck it in the waistband of her skirt. Now she looked frantically for snails, for shrimp. In the water were dozens of small fish. She tried again and again to snap one up. She caught one. The slower she moved her hand in the water, the more she was able to grab. These too she rolled in her waistband until she had several dozen. She caught three more and ate them on the spot, savored them, crunching their delicate bones between her few good molars. She caught another, was about to pop it in her mouth when she spied movement. She hid. Four girls stumbled toward her. They were filthy, covered with sores, as sickly as the sickest in her commune. The girls saw her but only one seemed to comprehend. Lowly the one muttered, “How much food do you get in your cooperative?” It had become the new idiomatic greeting of all Democratic Kampuchea.
In fear Vathana said nothing. The girls wandered on. Vathana trekked deeper into the forest. She came to a slight rise. The earth was saturated and the path was slick. She fell. She raised her head. This mud oasis, she thought, it could be a hideout. She rose. Now she walked more carefully, more afraid, as alert as her condition would permit. Months without proper nutrition affected her ability to concentrate. Swimming in her mind was the thought of ambush but it wouldn’t coalesce. She stumbled down the rise into a small clearing, into a slime pit where blackbirds fed ravenously, where smaller birds chirped and dove on scraps dropped by the ravens. Before she saw it she sensed it, felt the restless spirits of souls not blessed with proper ceremony. Then she saw the bodies floating as if suspended in a viscous twilight, face up, facedown, no face at all, floating in the rain, swimming, struggling to the surface of the pool, the decomposition gases filling internal sacs, rising, muck wings for the departed who could neither kick nor stroke but only do the deadman’s float until they broke the surface faceup, facedown, no face at all. Vathana fled. In her haste and dizziness she took a wrong path and ran into a clearing where a hundred low-lying objects were wrapped in opaque plastic bags. Again the feeling, again the hesitation, again the fixed eyes searching confirmation of a terror she wished not to confirm. A torn bag. A head crushed beyond recognition, the bag tied at the neck, the entire body buried. Vathana backpedaled, faster and faster. The fish in her waistband spilled. She spun, ran, fled, fled from the dark age of the thmils, but these were not thmils, not foreign atheists, but Khmer men and boys and girls turning the nation upon itself, turning it into a charnel house.
“You! Halt!”
Vathana stopped. A calm descended upon her. It would be better to die than to witness more. She turned to the voice. It was Met Nava. With him was Nem. They were killing the girls Vathana had seen earlier. Calm vanished. She ran hard. She would have run on leg stubs had they cut off her feet; on hands had they taken her legs. Her heart pumped wildly. She crashed through brush, splashed in the low water, lunged, dove-rose-dove in the deep.
That night there was an education session. The words changed little, the people in their exhaustion barely heard. “You work well,” Met Nava told them. “You are strong. You don’t need to eat. Work. There is no need to think. Give yourselves to Angkar. Angkar protects all, provides for all. Rebuild yourselves in the spirit of Angkar Leou.” Then came new orders. Do this, do that. “Tomorrow all will double their production. Mothers may suckle newborns only one month. Then they will be given to the lactaters of the children’s center.” Do that. Do this. Not that. Not this. This and this. People became confused. Confusion was punishable by death. Nava shouted, “Someone was seen stealing food from the people. She entered the forest. That person must stand.” No one moved. “If she does not stand—we know who it is—her family will fade away.”
Vathana lightly shut her eyes. Lord Buddha, she thought, they can only kill my body.
“Stand!”
Vathana rolled to her side but before she could rise seven women were up. Others began to cry. Then a man stood. Then another and another. Robona stood. Amara stood. Tears ran on Vathana’s cheeks. She stood. Everyone stood. To save face Met Nava grasped the closest woman to him. She was never seen again.
The rice gruel and the corn soup became yet thinner. One six-ounce can of rice in water per day was issued to sustain twenty adults. Met Nem teased the starving by letting them watch her eat plates of pork ribs, large boiled fish, dishes of vegetables. Some people went crazy. Others became apathetic. Bodies consumed themselves. Muscles atrophied. Skin sagged from bones without meat. Bones weakened as the minerals were metabolized to keep the organism alive. When few people could work and production fell below quotas, yotheas and mekongs feared that their lies to the enforcers, the padded production figures, would become sources of suspicion. Then they turned their backs when people plucked and ate worms from the fields. For many it was too little, too late. By the time the waters began to recede a quarter of the people of Sangkat 117 had died.
The first of the new rice was picked early and eaten green. This too caused problems because the grain was indigestible. A thousand people fell ill. In her sickness Amara gave Vathana her three-year-old son. To Robona she gave her five-year-old daughter. Her baby was dead. “You will get well again,” Vathana whispered to her cousin.
“No,” Amara said. She was too weak and too ill to rise from her sleeping mat. “When the mekong allows, you must take him. If I see him again, I will eat him.”
As Vathana brushed Amara’s hair from her eyes, Amara, unseen, under a rag blanket, slit her wrist with a shard of glass. Her head drooped to one side. Vathana thought she slept. She brushed her hair, quietly singing a sweet lullaby. Then she knew Amara was dead. “Go, dear Sister,” Vathana whispered in her ear. “Go to the true life.”
As fast as the new crop came in the yotheas ordered it removed. People stole what they could but the famine did not stop. At night, after work, Vathana’s mind ran terribly. She could not stop her thoughts. She was not yet ready to love her new son whom she was allowed to visit only one hour each week. For this she felt guilty. The guilt led to frustration, and the frustration to anger. She was angry at Angkar. Angkar was lies. Angkar promised them food for work but though the crop was sufficient there was no food. She was angry at the cadre who now openly admitted to being Communists. She was angry at Pol Pot who now openly admitted to being head of Democratic Kampuchea. Now Robona was near death. Her body swelled, blood flow to her extremities stopped. She lay down and refused to rise up. Vathana’s anger turned to Lon Nol, then to America. Shame, she thought. Shame on America for bringing on this misery. Shame on them for their indifference. Do they know? Do you know, John Sullivan? Does he know? How does he react? Does he cry for me? How does America react? Surely they know. Are there demonstrations in Washington? Maybe in Paris? Shame on them for their half-boiled policies. It would have been better to give no aid at all. None. Not just enough to keep us alive and suffering. They are as bad as the Khmer Rouge. Will they aid us again, bring us to life again, keep all Kampuchea suffering only to let us die again? John L., our daughter is lost. You didn’t even see her.
Then came new demands. Angkar, all were told, wishes the population to double. Women no longer menstruate, Vathana thought, and Pol Pot wants the population to double! Men! Do you know this, John L.? Do your people cry for mine? Do they know of this bloodbath? You warned me. How I hate myself for not believing you. You wanted to teach me? I used to teach my brothers and sisters how to forgive. In Phum Sath Din I helped Samay with his schoolwork. Oh, how Papa had plans for the family. Between the extremes, he said. In a Buddhist-Socialist state we would live well. But there is no state. Nothing can be done. All is lost. When I die I will go to my mother and to my children. Let us all die together. Let the Americans drop their atomic bomb. Then we can escape this life.
The night Robona died Vathana cried over her body. Beneath the platform a child spy heard her and the next day she was told she would not eat for a week. To cry was to criticize the regime.
In a few days Vathana’s body swelled. Her hands and feet became cold. She could not urinate though her urge was constant. She lay down and like Robona refused to rise for morning work call. At midday an old mat weaver came to give her water but she had no desire to eat or drink. Her eyes dulled, her body bloated, her lungs became congested. She lost control of her anal sphincter and diarrheic water fouled her skirt and mat. When conscious she thought to rise, to clean herself, prepare her body for death, but she did not care. Someone moved her from the hut. Someone forced palm sugar water down her throat. She vomited.
An entire month passed without her being aware of her treatment. Slowly she realized she was living in a house instead of a communal hut. What act of kindness had returned her from the dead she knew not, but she feared she was only being set up to be starved again. For a long time she remained morosely silent. Inside she wept. Another month passed. Each day the housekeeper brought three meals. At first she could not eat. Then she could not resist. She was brought new clothes, black, like all clothes, but clean and pressed. She saw no one except the housekeeper though she often heard a man’s voice and at night she heard clunking and scraping. She was not allowed to go from the house or to peer from the windows or doors. Then one day she was told she would marry Met Leng at the 17 April celebration. “But who is Met Leng? I cannot marry...”
“He is a veteran of the war,” the housekeeper interrupted. “You were dead, just as he was dead. He has given you life, just as Angkar had given him.”
“But my husband...he is not dead.”
“Your file said you never married.”
“I have a son. At the center.”
“He was your sister’s. He’s dead.”
“I have a husba—”
“Have you not yet learned to tremble?! You’ll see. Tomorrow night I will present you to the meeting. Angkar has decreed the people will produce more workers to advance the economy. Tomorrow you will marry my son.”
That night Vathana had a dream. Her dead mother came to her and told her not to marry this man. In the dream Vathana beseeched her mother’s spirit for a solution. The spirit said she would help and vanished.
All the next day Vathana was pampered by the housekeeper. The older woman brought her water and French soap to bathe, a small vial of perfume, new panties, a comb for her hair. She was given more new clothes, black; a sarong skirt, a shirt and a black krama. When night fell and the workers returned from the new excavation sites, there was a big meeting and a big celebration. For hours various chieftains boasted, bolstered or blasted the people. A cow was killed. Everyone was given a sliver of meat. Then names were called. From one side came fifty wisps of girl workers, from the other mostly yotheas though a few peasant men. The “betrothed” were not allowed to touch but simply stood across the center aisle from each other. Then Vathana was brought in to stand at the front of the line of women. In her new clothes with her regained weight she felt conspicuous. Compared to the others she was plump, beautiful. Her eyes shone. About her head she’d wrapped the black krama like an Egyptian goddess and in her clean hands she held a white chrysanthemum. Met Leng was helped to the head of the line of men. He could not stand without a crutch, for one foot pointed not sole to earth, but sole to sky. From the middle of his chest stuck the deformed arm. He leered at Vathana. She showed no shock, indeed appeared at ease with the deformed transporter of the dead.
Met Rama had been purged. Met Yam had been disappeared. Met Nava conducted the ceremony. “Comrades being married,” he said proudly, “today you accept the responsibility for each other as husband and wife until the end of your days. Assist each other in your service to Angkar. Never allow the other to falter. Now we will sing the national anthem. Then, eat soup. Then go back to work.” Nava led the meeting in song:
Bright red Blood which covers towns and plains
Of Kampuchea, our Motherland, Sublime Blood of workers and peasants,
Sublime Blood of revolutionary men and women fighters!
The Blood changing into unrelenting hatred ,
And resolute struggle,
On April 17th, under the Flag of the Revolution,
Frees from Slavery!
Long live, long live Glorious April 17th!
Glorious Victory with greater signification
Than the times of Angkor!
We are uniting to edify
Splendid and democratic new Kampuchea and new society
With equality and justice,
Firmly applying the line of independence, sovereignty and self-reliance.
Let us resolutely defend
Our Motherland, our sacred Soil
And our Glorious Revolution!
Long live, long live, long live, Democratic and prosperous new Kampuchea!
Let us resolutely raise high
The red Flag of the Revolution!
Let us edify our Motherland!
Let us make her advance with great leaps,
So that She will be more glorious and more marvelous than ever!
Vathana brought her new husband a stool. She sat at his feet. Small straw fires lit the ceremonial arena. Children brought bowls of soup, one per couple, and a choir sang revolutionary songs.
“Do I please you?” Vathana’s voice was sweet as she looked just below Leng’s eyes.
“You do,” he answered, reaching out to touch her. He put his good hand to her cheek, to her forehead. She pushed her head into it like a cat. He pushed his thumb up behind her ear. Her head...“Damn you!” he bellowed. He threw her to the ground ripping away the krama. Her head was bald, rough shaven, stubble and cuts everywhere. “You whore!” Leng screamed furiously. He kicked his broken leg, swung his bent arm. He roared, growled unintelligible noises.
Vathana scrambled up. “I am not your slave,” she shouted back. “I am not your servant. None of us are slaves? What are you going to do, kill me? Do it. I wish only deliverance from this hell.”
“Then”—Leng’s face distorted—“build your house at...at...at 169.”
People who have suffered multiple tortures and who have been starved for long periods do not scramble to elude additional inescapable torture but instead tend to set their minds and bodies for the impending punishment. So deep is the hopelessness of slavery that even when an opening for escape or resistance is presented, the tortured’s eyes are shut. “Submit. Go along. All attempts to flee have ended in death.” Thus it was, after Vathana’s small rebellion against Met Leng sent her to Site 169, Vathana’s spirit was in a greater state of depression than ever before. Only the promise to her father via Aunt Voen kept her from total submission and acquiescence to her own death. It did not, however, spark even the tiniest resistance to the tiger cage, nor did it cause her to object to all she was shown.
Life in the camp at 169 differed little from life at Sangkat 117. Vathana was immediately assigned a hut, given a tin plate, and put to work planting rice seedlings. Soon the monsoon rains began in earnest. The people at 169 were better fed than those at 117 yet still they were famished, frail, dropping from lack of food and long, tedious, strenuous slave labor. They were different in a way Vathana did not yet understand, more withdrawn, more suspicious. Constantly there was undertalk of the cliffs, of the body dumps and of an invasion force which soon would liberate them. Yet no sooner would Vathana hear someone whisper such than that person and those near her would be disappeared forever. Thus she too withdrew, spoke to no one, listened to no one. In June when the sun shone between rains she asked it, How can you shine on Cambodia? Why do you not weep until the land is washed clean? Indeed the rains were unusually hard that summer and the little dry season unusually short. The irrigation systems were chaotic. In one area water flowed too quickly and destroyed the earthworks, in another it stagnated to the point of putrefying. Flies flew in viscous swarms beneath the roofs of the huts without doors. Mosquitos, their buzzing constant, were so ravenous, ubiquitous, that when slaves were beaten they barely bled. Vathana tore small swabs from the hem of her skirt and plugged her ears. She wrapped her krama so it fit snugly at her eyebrows then loosely over and around her head, then doubling back to protect her neck and face. At night she slept beneath the cloth, pulled her ulcerated feet up into her skirt, her bony hands into the sleeves of her blouse. Still the flies and mosquitos got to her. Some of the less fortunate, some with no energy and no hope, let the insects feed and breed on them, calculating that death would thus liberate them sooner. From the eyes and open sores of those despondent souls squirmed maggots.
One night in July, forty-four women from a neighboring brigade, using their kramas, hung themselves. Seven were unsuccessful because the fabric of their scarves was too weak to hold their emaciated bodies. The next night eighteen more succeeded. On the third night Vathana was awakened by mosquitos on her face and neck sucking her dry. Someone had stolen her krama. Slowly, as first light crept into the hut, the images of her hut mates emerged. All were hung by their necks from kramas tied to the rafters.
“Stand still!” The yothea was mean, stern. In three days seventy people had cheated Angkar of killing them. “You will answer immediately and fully all questions you are asked.” Vathana stood perfectly still. Before she’d reported the suicides to her mekong she had regained her krama from a corpse and rewrapped her head and face. A young girl had evidently attempted to hang herself with her own scarf. When it shredded, she had quietly and gently removed Vathana’s while she slept. Vathana had found the girl’s tattered cloth near her sleeping mat. She had taken it and tied it about the girl’s neck, then she’d placed the body in such position as to make it appear the krama had held until after death.
Vathana waited. The yothea waited. He strode back and forth. She did not know why. The camp’s enforcer had been purged the day before. People were the property of Angkar Leou and only Angkar had the right to dispose of its property. As she stood she could feel her face heat up. She could feel sweat break out into the krama. Her entire body was warm and she thought the spirit of the dead girl must have been in her krama and now had entered her and was very angry. Then she felt chilled. Her jaw trembled. She tried to clench her teeth but they chattered out of control. Her head ached. Her breathing became rapid and shallow.
A car arrived. She had not seen an automobile in almost two years but her head hurt so badly she was not able to concentrate. A young man emerged. He was stiff and straight and strong, clad in the most beautiful gray uniform Vathana had ever seen. The yothea ran to him, snapped to attention, seemed ready to fall to the ground to kiss the man’s polished boots. The young man barely noticed. Other men emerged. They marched straight to her. Her trembling was now very bad.
“Did you aid these criminals?” The young man’s voice was even, professional.
Vathana tried to swallow but her throat had swelled; saliva and phlegm stuck at the epiglottis. She opened her mouth to speak but only the chattering of her teeth made sound. The man reached his hands to her krama, peeled it from her face then removed it completely. “Did you?”
“N...n...no.”
“No, Met Nang,” an aide corrected her.
“N...n...no, Me...et N...”
“That’s all right.” Nang smiled compassionately. “You are ill?” He snickered. If one claimed illness Angkar often interpreted it as a criticism. To criticize Angkar meant death. “Don’t speak. I can see you are ill.” He studied her face. “You didn’t join them, eh? That took great strength.” Nang turned to the local yothea. “See that she collects her belongings and comes to my house in the forest.”
“Yes, Met Nang.”
Nang smiled. He still held Vathana’s krama. Now he looked at her more closely. Her hair stuck out like porcupine quills, her face was a massive welt of mosquito bites, yet her eyes, shrunk in the hollows in her face, were the darkest he had ever seen.
“Why didn’t you join them?” Nang’s small laugh was vile. Vathana only trembled. Nang approved of her submissiveness. “In two days”—he beamed to Met Kosol—“to my house.”
To go build a house in the forest was a euphemism for being taken away to be murdered. Vathana was very frightened but her new sickness was so severe that for hours at a time she had no concentration for fear. She thought of the sickness—fevers and headaches and chills—and when she was lucid she knew it had been coming on for weeks, knew it was malaria, knew there was no one to help her, nowhere to get medicine. But in the hut where she had been condemned to stay amid the hanging dead she was seldom lucid.
She lay in delirium, thinking, I must live. I promised Papa. Tell them. No. You mustn’t. Don’t argue with them. They’ll kill you. Go along. I will live to get out. Go along. I’ll go to meet Mama. Sweet Mama. How I cry when I think of Papa’s words when he buried you. Mama, I’ve lost my children. Samol. You would love Samol. Is she with you? Samnang. He’s six now. Oh, what a wonderful boy. He is so strong. And Su Livanh. She had...no, Mama, she has red hair. She is so funny. What! Oh God, what’s coming? Please. Get them away. They’ll slash me. No! Don’t make me fertilizer. Oh Divine Buddha...Oh! Teck! You...they killed you. I’m sorry. I don’t want to lose your child. Don’t be angry. Don’t blame me. I would be a good wife if you...Samnang. Teck, leave Samnang...He...he’s a good boy...I’ll come to Phnom Penh. John? He...you know how I am ordered...I hate America...I hate Americans...you know how...I love Captain Sullivan. You cannot take him. You cannot take him in the night.
When the fever broke Vathana lay listless, exhausted, not yet asleep but in semiconsciousness, trying to hang on to the delirium dream, to analyze it, but usually losing it in the sleep that followed. For two days she lay in the hut of the hanging dead. Six times the fever spiked, six hours she spent feeling it coming, feeling her headache build to the point she knew her brains would burst, then six hours in delirium fevers trembling, moaning, then fifteen hours in postfever semiconsciousness or sleep.
In the few hours between she prepared her body for disappearance. Carefully she cleaned herself as best she could. Carefully she arranged her clothes, confiscating a single clean sarong skirt from the mat of a woman in her hut. There was but to wait, to pray. She did not eat. There was only green rice and only a little. It would be of better use for someone who was not to go to the forest.
The second day passed. No one came for her. Then passed the third, fourth and fifth. The fevers got worse. Now, in the time between, the headaches were so severe she could not rise. The sixth day passed. She was morose. Bodies began to fall, to break apart and fall. The smell was horrible. Inside she cried because she was all alone. She had no tears. Then someone came and told her there was war at the border and the Center had issued a new directive. Everyone with Viet Namese ancestry was to be killed immediately. Met Nang was very busy. The cliff was overloaded. She should return to work and live elsewhere.
Beat thyself, America, he thought, he screamed at them in his thoughts. Sullivan stood at the bar. Conklin would not make it to San Francisco for two more days. He had resisted drinking, but with Huntley backing out and Conklin’s delay, he’d had a shot and a beer and his resistance had crumbled.
Flail thy back with the straps of Southeast Asian crimes ye committed, he yelled at the top of his lungs in his mind as he chased the Jack Daniel’s with Bud. Forget all else. For what does it mean for a nation to gain all the world but to lose its soul, eh? Ay, ye decrepit fool, proclaim thy guilt and bury thyself in self-indulgence. Fornicate in BMWs. Masturbate in stone-washed dun-gar-ees. What matter? You’ve been proven guilty of the most heinous crimes—your young bucks have, in time of war, under great tension and less than great leadership, they have raped, murdered, plundered.
He glanced at the reports spewing from the borrowed attaché case onto the polyethylene surface. “...we must arrange the Party’s history into something clean and perfect, in line with our policies of independence and self-mastery.” They were Pol Pot’s words, words from the Party’s journal. Uck, he thought. In the dining room behind him people were picking at their food. He watched plate after plate being carried to the automatic dishwasher, heaped with untouched mashed potatoes, or enough steak to feed a village for a week.
Though it was against our law, his mental oration ran, though it was against our policy and against normal operating procedure, Some Americans committed atrocious crimes. That most were honorable, brave, honest and righteous, that their cause was one of freedom for a people assailed by the modern-day Hun, the Hun whose slaughter paralleled that of seventeenth-century Swedes in Poland, paralleled that of Stalinist Russia, is to no account. Or is it only my righteousness? Ay, ye America, condemn thyself before all the people of the world, tell them you are not worthy and abdicate all responsibility to all humanity. Fornicate in BMWs. Masturbate in stone-washed dun-gar-ees. Truckle thy principled manner to microwave ovens and world-class shopping sprees. Spread thy thighs for stereo-television, camcorder complexes projecting images of thy vile and hideous past, thy violent streets, thy corrupt and exploitive businesses. That most of you are decent means nothing.
Conklin, of all people! He had agreed to go back. Him with his lady. Divorced now. In January of 1976, one report said, the defection of Krahom troops was so high some referred to it as the second revolution. In Ratanakiri, only a few months back, the Krahom minister of defense led KK Regiment 703 in an open uprising against Pol Pot’s local forces. Then there was an aborted rebellion in the eastern zone and a Colonel Rin and thousands of troops had escaped to Viet Nam and were forming a new Khmer Viet Minh.
Abdicate thy role, America, Sullivan snarled inside. I am not worthy. I am not worthy. To every nation: Know ye, America is not worthy.
A second famine is reported to be sweeping Democratic Kampuchea and upwards of half the population is estimated to be at risk of perishing. What the fuck, Sullivan thought. It ain’t on TV. It can’t be true. How did Elie Wiesel, the Nazi holocaust survivor, put it? “...if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” Is it so painful to look at that we deny it? Forget it? Change the historical script? Or is it no such deep and hidden psychological defense mechanism but instead our hedonistic and narcissistic shallow selves attempting to entertain ourselves to death with the latest lust from the giggly-boob tube? Is it cover-up or just plain apathy?
Sullivan downed another shot. In his mind he blared to the world, Expect nothing if insurgents attack. We’ve nothing to offer. It is the lesson we’ve learned from Viet Nam. Lo, if thee shall fall behind the creeping curtain of restricted information flow—we know not your suffering. How can it be?! It’s not on our TV.
“In the lee of world view,” the report said, “Khmers had to march to their deaths even when they knew that was where they were marching.” My daughter, marching to her death, he thought, and the anger in him was so immense, only another shot kept him from tearing the bar from the floor and thrashing the people behind him, beside him.
Fornicate in your BMWs, he screamed at them in his mind, while the filthy fat female sighs lewdly over your vehicular speakerphone, only three dollars per minute. Masturbate in stone-washed dun-gar-ees. You are not worthy to entertain the thought of assisting others. Abdicate thy responsibility with dry, stinkless armpits. You can be sure you are not worthy. You can feel soft as a gentle summer breeze—as Khmers toast.
Soft leather reclining bucket seats with six-speaker vehicular video-audio...Lao die under yellow rain from poison bee pollen shaken from bugs by PAVN high explosives and napalm. Peace at last in Southeast Asia!
Peace is at hand. Sullivan now drank directly from the beer bottle, purposely hoping it disgusted the well dressed about him. The domino theory has been disproven. Angola does not touch Kampuchea. I am not worthy. Abdicate thy responsibility to the people of the world. Do not give me your homeless. They probably carry disease. I am not worthy to even think I may be intelligent enough to sort out what is decent from what is foul. The insurgents have legitimate points, after all. World, you are not worthy of the sacrifice of even one American life. Have a bag of money. Let me sell you some bombs. It is the lesson of Viet Nam.
I have a daughter! She is the property of Angkar Leou! You bastards. Fornicate in thy Mercedes in your sealed, secure garage, behind your tight security system—in your stone-washed denim lacy lingerie from Freddie of HoBo Woods.
Why? Bastards! You devious, calculating...make a “new communist woman” of my daughter...Is that a manifestation of your “purity of purpose,” your desire for pure communism?
What of our myths, our moral foundation, our history, my fellow Americans? In January 1961 John F. Kennedy said
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger....The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
Was it not that spirit which propelled me, us, into the Viet Nam era? Change the word “spirit” to “purpose” or “motive.” The spirit, purpose, and motive survived Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullets. But it could not survive the icon busters. Revelations that JFK was boffing MM or whomever while Jackie was on hold tarnished the hero in the tabloid brains of America and that tarnish dulled his beautiful, altruistic and moralistic ideals. Results: the hero falls from grace and with him the mythical strength, his high ideals and with that, the motivation to emulate. Cultural idealism wanes. Society accepts less, standards fall, people emulate the mores of television vamps and the generation gurus.
Lock your iron triangle on thy guilt, oh nation. I am not worthy of any good. Thus I am free from trying. Look out for number one! It is the lesson of Viet Nam.
Reexamine your viewpoints, your foresight and hindsight—not, for most, your principles. Fifty million people have been enslaved in Southeast Asia since the falls, fifty million political hostages. Around the world “free” nations are backing off to appease Soviet expansionism because of America’s decline in power, not firepower but willpower. Oh, to lie you down, America. Right there. On that couch. Lie down, you big overstuffed oaf. Oh to be the guide on your psychoanalytic journey—not because you are nuts, but because you’ve got so much right with you, so much of positive value to offer the world. If only you weren’t hung up on immediate gratification. If only you could cope with your insecurities and face reality. If only you had a sense of your own, and world, history.
Fuck it! Fornicate on the hood of your Ferrari. Nay, masturbate, America. No one wants to lie with the guilt ridden.
But know this, world, America may stay at home—but John Sullivan is coming.