“I KILLED MY FATHER,” Met Nang told Vathana. He had had her brought to his house, bathed, scrubbed raw, fed, given chloro-quinine and tetracycline, and put in the cage in his room. “Well, not really,” Nang continued. His words were quick though he tried to portray himself as detached. “He killed himself. I could have prevented it. Maybe not. He...he was so...I mean he confessed. He confessed to being infected with yuon disease. He confessed to many horrible and malicious acts against the people and against the state. Of course, he had to die.”
“I killed my father,” Nang repeated. Vathana said nothing. She was not expected to comment. She squatted in the low cage when Nang came, squatted, stared, listened. At times the young man babbled straight Krahom-Marxist cliché babble; at other times he referred to very intimate details of his personal life, yet all of it was scattered and out of context. For months Vathana had no idea what he was talking about. Always there was the one recurring theme: I killed my father.
When Nang was not home Met Nem, the housekeeper and teacher of Nang’s children, often let Vathana out of the cage. Nem was severe yet, within her own system, consistent and just. She was given the task of remaking Vathana in the image of Angkar. It was serious business. Angkar was strong. Vathana must be strong. Angkar was powerful. Vathana must be powerful. Angkar was righteous, pure, single-minded. Vathana must hold only the beliefs of Angkar Leou. The skin of her feet and hands, which had looked like dried wax when she’d been chosen, began to moisten and fill. Her hair grew out. Clumps with scabs fell off leaving bald pink patches on the scalp but these were soon hidden beneath thickening new growth. Daily Nem coined Vathana, rubbing her back or shoulders or legs with a brass coin until the skin seemingly glowed red. Nem pulled her earlobes, her hair. Vathana, having twice been starved to the point where food was repulsive, was now again force-fed until she continuously craved food. In the cage her body filled out like a calf being fattened for veal.
Each day Nang made Nem undress Vathana before him so he could gauge the results. The sickly stick figure became curvaceous. Nang lifted her breasts—once nothing but shriveled nipples in a sunken chest, now, slowly, the lovely tissues of femininity—with his pincer. “It is,” he told Nem, not even addressing Vathana, “the best way to assess the progress.”
Then for days he would be gone and Vathana would sit or squat or lie in the small tiger cage in his room in his house in the forest isolated from the horrors, forced to listen to Radio Phnom Penh, to listen to Pol Pot’s three-, four-, five-hour broadcasts. Then the winds shifted, the rains passed and the harvest season came. During daylight new winds carried a constant low moaning. At night, all night, the wind brought a ghastly, odorous cloud. There was a great thrust at the border, vicious fighting, constant reports of Khmer victories, each nearer to the heart of Democratic Kampuchea.
Nang returned. He was flushed, feverish, agitated. Again he babbled the nonsense about killing his father, but now to Vathana he seemed not to hear his own words. Then he said to her, “You are now loyal to Angkar.” She, as always, did not respond. He turned on her, a harsh evil glare contorting his scarred features. “You are now one with Angkar.”
“Yes, Met Nang.” She did not know what he wanted. She wanted only more food.
“Yes. You had better say yes. We destroyed the foreign devils. Yes?”
“Yes, Met Nang.”
“Where is Nem?”
“I’m not given to...”
“You,” Nang exploded, “are one with Angkar! Angkar saved you. Angkar gave you life.” Nang reached out, grasped her shirt, jerked it hard throwing her across the room. The shirt opened. He leaped toward her, grabbed the shirttail and ripped up, over her head. Vathana cringed. Nang seized her skirt, yanked it from her. “I fuck them,” he shouted. “Do you doubt me?”
“N...no.” Vathana rushed the answer.
“I fuck them and kill them because they are evil. Do you doubt me?”
“No.”
“Should I fuck you?” he screamed. He stood over her, his teeth clenched, his hands balled into rock-tight fists ready to smash her to death. Vathana looked into his eyes. Behind his insanity she saw his fear and she relaxed. “Should I?” Nang screamed. Vathana lay back. She touched her fingertips to her shoulders, above her breasts, her elbows at her side. She did not know why but she was not afraid. She resisted by offering no resistance.
“I fuck them all,” Nang seethed again. He dropped to a knee, grasped her pants, ripped them apart. “Then I cover them with city evils.” As he spoke he shoved his stubbed hand between her legs, rubbing, separating the labia. “Rouge, lipstick, necklaces.” Nang laughed. Vathana stared at the roof. She shuddered from a stab of pain. Still she did not resist. “The yuons stuff women with rice stalks. Ha! But you are one with Angkar.” His tone became less severe, his pressure softened. “You are not yet called to walk to Thailand. Struggle, Met Ana. Struggle courageously to be one with Angkar.”
Now Nang smiled. He seemed relieved, then dizzy, then relieved again. It was very hot, the moaning was very loud. “I fucked you well, eh?”
“Yes, Met Nang.”
“We must have faith in Met Sar, in Pol Pot, in Angkar. Angkar will crush all enemies.”
“Yes, Met Nang.”
“Now you must come with me. I will show you how enemies are crushed. Then we can fuck again. The CIA pays thousands of evildoers but we ferret them out. Everyone must be scrutinized. Anyone may be an agent. Anyone!”
In late December the Viet Namese launched a massive broad-front attack stretching from the Gulf of Siam to the high plateau of the Srepok Forest. Again fear of treachery set off a wave of killings in the interior and again Met Nang became very busy. Now he did not leave Vathana in the cage but brought her to witness his efficiency. First he showed her the prisons, the meticulous records room, the photography “studio,” the confession chambers.
“You must read his confession,” Nang told her one day.
“Whose?”
“My father’s. He was very evil.”
Vathana stared at Nang. She was reluctant to answer. This creature had total control of her. “If you wish me to see...”
“Ha! Maybe sometime, Met Ana. You are very brave. Tonight I will fuck you well. Very special. Now I will show you a platform ceremony.”
The Viet Namese invasion fizzled in January 1978. The Krahom armies drove the invaders back toward the border, and in celebration the Center launched a new purge. For two months Vathana accompanied Nang to witness one atrocity after another. Some were small: a married couple stripped, the wife raped by several yotheas before her husband—then his genitals hacked off and given to her—then both disemboweled. Some were large: platform ceremonies like the earliest ones, except now the women and children were told they were being reunited with fathers or husbands who had disappeared years earlier. They were lined up on the platform, given a speech, given flowers to present to the men who would come shortly. Till the very end the ruse continued. Bloodlines were being eradicated. Some were massive: groups of a hundred or two hundred were led, arms tied, to dikes of neighboring sangkats, then they were bludgeoned to death with hardwood clubs. As young children shrieked for their kin, yotheas bayoneted them or grabbed them by the feet and used them as clubs to smash the adults. The neighbors were called to bury the dead. Then they were ordered to dig deep ponds which later became their own mass graves.
Now as they traversed the northern part of the zone, Vathana saw many empty phums. Many nights she lay limp and the thought would come to her, come softly without intensity, come to her emptied spirit, I have seen so much, too much, when this ends I shall never see again.
In the early months of 1978 she was so numb she followed Nang like a beaten dog. He had taken to “fucking” her every night. The sessions never lasted long and most often it was with the stub of his damaged hand. Yet some nights were “very special.” These nights he penetrated her with various objects: the femur of a long-dead victim, a long narrow ebony statuette of Pol Pot carved by a prisoner to Nang’s specifications, a loaded American 45-caliber pistol. “This is how Americans fuck,” Nang would coo. “Very special, eh?”
Through it all Vathana remained submissive, passive, at times praying, calling in her mind, Divine Buddha, Enchanted One, Compassionate One! but most often not praying, attempting on an inner plane to become nonexistent and thus to mask all emotions. She was not totally successful. “Everything I see takes a piece of my heart,” she once told one of Nang’s children. “Soon I’ll have no heart. You have a heart, eh? I’ve seen many piles of dead. I’ve seen...one time he brought me to see a forest ambush. Then he told me he brought his own father on ambush and the old man tried to warn the people by ticking his finger against a dry palm frond. Met Nang pretended to be asleep. He is very tricky, eh?” The child liked the story and told the others and for a week Nang didn’t fuck her because he was too angry.
Then he took her to the cliff. He was so proud. “Tonight,” he told her, “will be very very special. This is where I killed my father.” Nang was joyous. It was late March. The sun was high, the wind carried the sounds and smells away from the small tree house. A dozen yotheas were playing blindman’s buff with the emaciated waste of political upheaval. Some people screamed when they fell, some seemed able to see beneath their blindfolds. Some of these ran, leaped from the precipice, attempting to deny the yotheas the enjoyment of their death. Most stumbled, half dead already, finally tripping at the edge, sliding down the short lip then silently falling; the sound of their bodies hitting denied the yotheas because of the odd wind. The boys became bored and left.
“He died very well for an enemy,” Nang said. “I’ll have Met Arn fetch his file. You’ll see. You would do exactly what I did. When I was in school I was taught this.”
The day moved slowly on, the sun seemed to linger. Nang told her about the school on Pong Pay Mountain and his journey north. Between incidents he lambasted her for her weakness, for her improper background, for not having become a neary long before Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk. He raged about friends and foes. “We are betrayed by devious allies and heinous saboteurs,” he shouted. Then, “But my security apparatus will get them. It will uncover them all.” He paced, waiting for the sun to set, waiting for Arn, waiting to show her his Lakshmi, his own vision of the hell which awaits the treacherous and the evil ones. “More than eight hundred families in the district are under suspicion. There are twenty thousand ex-CIA agents in 169 alone. I will prove them all traitors, all.”
As the sky darkened Vathana stood beside Nang. She watched the lines forming up out of sight of the cliff’s edge. Arn brought the file Nang had requested. Agitated more than ever Nang rampaged amongst the papers. His hand shook, his entire body was in near spasm. “Look!” he ordered, shaking the confession before her. “See!” He snatched it back. He read a line here, there, then found and read aloud the paragraph he wanted her to hear:
...in appearance I am totally a revolutionary. I struggle to cultivate the paddies, I vigorously attack the forest, I courageously plow and rake. But deep in my mind I serve the imperialists. I can no longer hide my traitorous acts of toeing the American line. I am a feudalist. I stood with the establishment. I am not a human being. I am an animal...
“See! See! An animal! He wasn’t human. See! He denied his humanity, therefore he could be killed. I was right. Kampuchea must be purified.”
As Nang spoke the generator kicked on and lights appeared over the abyss. Vathana trembled but she could not turn away. The wind shifted. The smell was horrible but still she bore witness. Screams of those being murdered cut her like the hatchets of the fertilizer pit. She could not move. The screams, the low moaning, penetrated her veil of defensive numbness. She cried inwardly, afraid, aware again of fear, of her fear, fear of expressing an emotion. For hours she stood holding the railing, stood frozen, stood dying inside with each scream. Nang launched into a new harangue. “Today, ninety-five percent of the people live under better conditions than they did under the old regime.” On and on he went. “Without the collective system we are defenseless. Without it the yuons would disappear the entire Khmer race.” On and on went the killings. At first light the descending screams ceased. Now there was a new flurry of activity. The odor of gasoline enveloped them. “We must get down.” Nang prodded her. In the dim light Vathana could see yotheas throwing hundreds of small bags of liquid over the cliff, the bags bursting onto the mass of broken screaming groaning bodies. Then a torch. Everyone standing fell flat. From the abyss came a long FaaAHHHH-WHHUUUMP, a blast of flame, an ear-splitting roar, a swirling wind. The screaming died. Below, the mutilated living suffocated as the conflagration sucked all air from around them. The bodies hardly burnt. Some charred in small secondary fires. Now there was no moaning.
Nang led Vathana down the steep path beside the cavern, across the small trail which brought them to the base of the cliff.
“Before we used flame,” Nang said, businesslike, a subordinate foreman explaining a process to a manufacturing CEO, “the flies were horrible. Now it’s not so bad.”
“This is how you murdered your father?” Vathana’s voice for the first time was strong. Nang stepped back. “Like this.?”
“Well, not exactly. He really killed himself. He...”
“You’ve murdered all these people?!”
“No! They’re enemies. Every one. Everyone’s confessed. They’re animals. Old grass must be burned for new grass to grow.”
Vathana put her hands to her face but she did not hide her eyes. Black chunks of charred meat clung to bone shards which had been blown everywhere by the explosions. On the highest tier, evidently a pocket protected from the concussion, were thousands of decomposing bodies amid thousands of skeletons whose bones had been cleaned by insects and bleached by the sun. On the middle and lowest levels the bodies were mashed and macerated beyond recognition.
Nang began to back out. His joy at showing her the new system had been deflated. His anger had not yet risen. Vathana stopped him. She grabbed him by his disfigured hand, then turned back to the massacre. “Angkar has raped Cambodia.” Her voice was as hard as his.
“What do you know?” Nang’s anger finally caught. His eyes glazed. He cocked his arm to bludgeon her.
“You don’t know how to fuck,” she snarled. She stepped into him. One hand went straight to his groin. He squirmed backward. She held him. “You fuck with this.” She squeezed him. “I’m going to teach you. I’ve fucked imperialists. I’ve fucked an American. Now I’m going to teach you and you’ll know. Then you won’t have to rape Cambodia.”
“An...an...an American. You’ve...with an American. Raped! You can say Angkar has raped Kampuchea! Kampuchea’s been raped. Raped by the French. Raped by the Thais, the Japanese, the yuons. Sihanouk raped Kampuchea. Lon Nol raped Kampuchea. Americans raped Kampuchea. Now yuons again.” As he spoke his furry expanded. Vathana did not let go. He shoved fingers into her eyes. “There’s nothing”—he stepped forward, she tripped back—“nothing we do which is not justified. All deserve to die. The rapers. The looters. The invaders. The bombers. I laugh at their deaths. I gorge myself on their blood. I should rape you. It is justified.”
Vathana exploded into hysterical menacing laughter. “You’re a little boy. Your father, ha! He didn’t teach you to be a man.” Again Nang cocked a fist to smash her but she skipped back. He shuffled forward, slipped on a human heart, fell. “Let me teach you,” she taunted. “Let me make you a man.” She laughed hysterically. “Fuck me very special! Ha!”
Nang stopped. He was trapped. He could kill her but then she wouldn’t teach him. I’ll kill her after, he thought. “Okay.” His voice settled. “Tonight you teach me.”
John Sullivan sat in a bath in the Royal Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. The door to the small suite was open, and lounging on the bed reviewing the new reports was Ian Conklin. For almost a year they’d worked in the camps along the border, helping, by day, refugees as prescribed by the Cambodian Crisis Relief manual. At night they’d searched for clues to Vathana’s whereabouts, asked every new refugee if they’d seen or heard of a small red-haired girl. Very few refugees from the East had reached Thailand, virtually none from the far Northeast. Their original intensity waned, their enthusiasm dwindled in the boredom of routine. Once a month they returned to Bangkok for self-authorized R&R.
“ ‘The Viet Namese invasion of December 1977 to January 1978 threw the interior into a great state of madness,’ ” Conklin read loudly enough for Sullivan to hear over the gurgle of water. “ ‘Although the entire front advanced, there were major blitzkrieg spearheads against which KK air power (nearly nonexistent) and artillery were ineffective. Major Khmer units were ill equipped and poorly led. In the North the PAVN rolled to the east bank of the Mekong River at Stung Treng; in the South they advanced to Neak Luong with little difficulty. Radio Hanoi claimed the drive freed 150,000 Khmers. Phnom Penh reported the Viet Namese forcibly conscripted 150,000 and sent them into battle against Pol Pot’s forces.’ ”
“Probably ten times too high,” Sullivan called out. “Neak Luong, huh?”
“Yeah. Yeah, probably. ‘On 6 January 1978, the Viet Namese spearheads—with amphibious vehicles, ferry boats, helicopters, portable bridging, tanks and artillery—stopped. Phnom Penh claimed a glorious victory saying guerrilla tactics behind the PAVN lines forced the Viet Namese to withdraw. Some observers have concluded the problem was the new Viet Namese army was heavily comprised of ex-ARVN soldiers who purposefully sabotaged the invasion. On 6 February, its troops withdrawn to old border sanctuary bases, Hanoi publicly called for peace talks between the two nations—indicating that only by its good grace was the offensive canceled and Phnom Penh left standing. Pol Pot immediately rejected Hanoi’s proposal.’ ”
“You know what I think?” Sullivan called. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I think any observer who thinks the PAVN is full of ex-ARVNs is full of shit.”
“Just listen, will ya. It says, ‘The campaign resulted in the death of one third of Kampuchea’s army, about thirty thousand soldiers. The PAVN suffered almost equal casualties, though this represented but five percent of its force. In the Kampuchean interior cadre in several western provinces “planned” or launched small rebellions against the Center. All were put down, most (even those which were imaginary) by preemptive massacres. In the East dissident factions have flocked to join the new Khmer Viet Minh. Politically the interior is polarized and fragmented. Pol Pot himself has drawn distinctions between the units of Takeo, Kampot, and Kompong Speu, who are his “unconditional troops,” and all others, whom he suspects of double-dealing.’ ”
“Where do they get that stuff?” Sullivan asked.
“Same place we do, I’d guess.”
“From refugee reports?”
“There and commie radio.”
“Conk!”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sick of these border camps. I haven’t gotten to step one in a whole fuckin year.”
“Yeah. You haven’t gotten out of that tub yet, either. It’s my turn.”
“I want to go inside,” Sullivan said.
“Inside?”
“Yeah. Inside.”
Slowly Vathana unbuttoned Nang’s gray tunic. It was in her mind that she would be killed the moment they finished but that did not matter. In this one way, by this one act, she would attempt to plant a seed of love in his sterile desiccated soul. Perhaps it would germinate. Perhaps, in time, long after her body had rotted, he would abandon this murdering.
“You have very big muscles,” Vathana said. It was the first time she’d seen him without, his uniform. “You have many scars.”
“In the war...” He hesitated. He felt vulnerable without the tunic. He felt giddy. He felt foolish. “...I was stronger and quicker and more sure. I could pick a coin from a blind man’s cup without him feeling or the monk seeing.”
“Do you remember, before the war...” Vathana pulled her blouse tail from her skirt. “...I would collect kathen...” She looked upon Nang’s face as never before, looked beyond the burn-scar, beyond the face of her master, her executioner. “...during the bon I would give the alms to the monks...” Vathana lightly laid a hand on Nang’s belt. “Papa was very...”
Nang went rigid. A wave of humiliation swept over him. “Stop.” Vathana stilled. “Before...I...I want you to read my father’s confession. All of it. It is...you will understand then. Then we can proceed.”
He forced her to the cage, left, returned with the file, released her, sat. Immediately, Vathana saw the notebooks. A shudder quaked her entire body, a tremor more severe than any malaria attack, more frightening than the errant bomb on Neak Luong.
“...It...” Nang stuttered. “It was...an accident, really. He should have...What is it?”
“Those...”
“Those?”
“Notebooks. You have one and seven!” Vathana’s hand flew. Crack! She slapped Nang’s face, knocking him from the chair. “One and seven! You murderer!” Shock grabbed her, grabbed him. To her these meant Chhuon’s death. She went beyond shock, beyond horror. Met Nang, executioner....She pounced on the file. The script was unmistakable. She glared, screamed, “Don’t you wonder...why...one and seven?”
“Hum?” He was totally bewildered.
“I have two through six.” She fell to her knees, wailed a terrible crying sobbing cackling wail.
Met Nem and Kosol broke into the room. “Get out!” Nang shrieked.
Vathana vomited. Again she glared at Nang. Still he sat on the floor. “Every day, every night, I see the dead parade before me and it’s...it’s...it’s because of my own brother. My brother!”
“Who’s your brother? Don’t be stupid. I’m...”
“Cahuom Samnang. That’s who you are. Little Samnang, son of Chhuon, lost at Plei Srepok...Oh! Oh...oh...oh...” She beat her fists on the floor, on her thighs. For a long time she cried. Nang sat stupefied. Then he rose, collected his tunic and left.
He did not return until long after the rains began. The monsoon rains of 1978 were heavier even than those of 1977, the worst in a hundred years. Everywhere fields washed out and people died but Vathana no longer was privileged to witness the genocide. No longer was she caged, but she did not flee. The house staff bitched constantly to her about betrayals, about new conditions, about Met Sar’s ignoble abandonment. They treated her not like a prisoner but like the shadow queen, yet she knew she could not escape. By June yotheas were complaining about the lack of rice and other staples, about the renewed moaning because there was no gasoline, about the loathsome stench which even the heaviest rains in a century could not wash from the air.
Then Nang returned. He was insane. With the others he bitched about the odor and the moaning though daily he tabulated the progress Site 169 was making in the eradication of enemies and useless elements. Each tenth day he filed his report exactly as he had for three years. And if the progress was less than satisfactory Nang meted out punishment to cadre and subordinates as if none of his acts were tied to the moaning and the odor.
In July Nang took Vathana back toward the cliff. She had read and memorized Chhuon’s file, had sent Met Arn to unearth the middle notebooks.
At the base of the cliff Nang took an overgrown path she’d not seen. It led down a steep escarpment to a gushing, vine-cloaked stream which flowed from the cliff. “I found it when I came for my father.” Nang’s words were unconnected to previous utterances. The banks were red—from laterite soil or blood. He led her, in silence, downstream hundreds of meters. There, partially buried by jungle, was a small temple. “I’ve been cleaning it,” Nang whispered. The stone walls were carved with hundreds of lingas, phallic symbols, the symbols of creative power of the Hindu god Siva. “He wished to bless the waters which flow to the paddies,” Nang said. “This is where I am from. I came at the wrong time.”
“Samnang,” Vathana whispered, “for our father...your father...let me go. Let the people escape.” Nang grasped her hand and pulled her to a second wall bedecked with ancient Apsarases, the heavenly maidens of Kambuja, and tortured slaves. “Samnang, you have a choice.”
“Like them”—Nang rubbed a hand on the bas relief—“we are condemned to cycles of destruction and creation.”
“Do you hear me? You can choose, right now. You can let the people live. They are not animals. Even animals, Samnang...Samnang...”
“Do you know why we call them yuons?”
“What? No. Listen. Please listen.”
“When Chams attacked Kambuja in the tenth century they had Viet slaves. They were called yavana, evil foreigners.”
“Samnang, you do not have to kill.”
“Hum? Every Khmer must kill. Everyone must kill thirty yuons. The Center so decrees. We may sacrifice two million in combat but we will kill sixty million Viet Namese. There will still be millions of Kampucheans to repopulate all Southeast Asia. I will have them all work harder. Double our production.”
“Samnang! Stop! Stop it! We don’t need to wipe out the Viet Namese. They aren’t devils. They’re humans too.”
“Ha! I know. Ha!” Nang turned to her, pulled her close, whispered so even the Apsarases couldn’t hear, “i’ve had a meeting, ssshh! no one must know, first i must finish the killings. then...ha! i’ve met with them.”
The interior of Democratic Kampuchea in mid- and late 1978 was more treacherous than anything Sullivan had seen in Viet Nam or Cambodia in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Ambushes were everywhere. The bodies of those who’d attempted escape lined the routes to the border. And of those who did not flee, the reports were numbing. The killings were the heaviest of the Pol Pot years. Like Nazi Germany in 1945, Angkar Leou seemed bent on stamping out the evidence of its own atrocities. It turned not only on the people but also upon itself, and the bloodbath leaped by logarithmic degrees up a vengeance scale. The Free World barely reacted.
New mass deportations struck some areas. Starvation continued everywhere. Reports claimed that up to 300,000 Khmers had fled to Viet Nam, that Krahom military units continued to mutiny, that forty thousand Khmer insurgents were “working the border” and that the Center had decreed a new offensive against the Viet Namese. The trickle of refugees to Thailand increased to a steady stream. Still the Free World barely reacted.
Sullivan and Conklin found penetration deeper than a few kilometers almost impossible. They were phalangs, tall white foreigners. No matter where they went, they stood out. Still they made their forays—into the South, the center, the North. Always they returned, sometimes empty-handed, sometimes with a fleeing family in tow, to a small house they’d rented near Aranyaprathet. The home was in the town where many of the relief agencies had field headquarters. They made their house their headquarters, their information center. They lined the walls with maps, concocted an elaborate file system of where they’d searched, what they’d learned, where the people they’d contacted originated from, and their route to that border point.
Newsweek magazine carried refugee stories in the 23 January issue. The articles concluded, “Some of the horror stories told by refugees about life in Cambodia are undoubtedly exaggerations....Several prominent Indochina experts have recently disputed many of the refugees’ charges, contending that a few thousand Cambodians at the most have died at the hands of Angkar Leou. They also maintain that it was a matter of economic necessity to relocate the population into rural areas because U.S. bombing forced too many people off the land during the Vietnam War.”
“Damn!” Sullivan blurted, reading the old issue which had just arrived. “If one replaces the word Cambodia with Germany the statement could have been from Free World papers of 1943 or even ’44 or ’45. Will we ever learn? It’s so much easier to deny the reports. Then they don’t have to feel the guilt of apathy.”
Conklin picked up the magazine. The article showed photos of “baby-faced executioners” and spoke of ghost towns. “Who the fuck are these ‘experts’?”
“Can’t you guess?” Sullivan snapped back.
In the same issue there was a story about Soviet expansionism into the Horn of Africa—the USSR can move three divisions to African supply sites in one day. Also noted was the assassination in Nicaragua of La Prensa editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro-Cardenal. Allegedly he was murdered by Somoza-backed death squads though there was the possibility the killers were Sandinistas posing as Somoza men. The death touched off major street rioting. Both stories, Sullivan said to Conklin, smacked of standard insurgent tactics seen in Southeast Asia for the past three decades. “How come they don’t suggest a connection?”
The two ex-Special Forces teammates crossed the border west of Preah Vihear in June. For three kilometers the area had been picked clean. Then they came upon an uncrossable swath of forest evidently so littered with land mines that even Khmer Rouge soldiers couldn’t pick their way through. They moved cautiously west, trying to outflank the mined belt. For two days they saw nothing but the mutilated bodies of soldiers. On their return to Aranyaprathet Sullivan was more depressed than ever.
His new reading material did nothing to bolster his spirits. Columnist David Broder, speaking of U.S. involvement in Central America, simply said America was pursuing “the path of stupidity again.” Quoting Senator Frank Church he said, “...we seem unable to learn from the failure of our Viet Nam policy...Somehow, someday, this country has got to learn to live with revolutions in the third world.”
“Which stupid lessons shall we learn, Mister Broder?” Sullivan threw the article at Conklin. “Shall we learn to allow the Pol Pots of the world to slaughter their own people—as long as we don’t see it? This morally depraved person thinks not. There are other lessons we should learn. To hide our heads is not one. To question why our Viet Nam policies failed is valid and essential, but to do so means to examine and analyze, not to accept flippant propaganda.”
In June 1978, Viet Nam cracked down on its 1.5 million people of Chinese ancestry, confiscating their property and driving them from their homes. In Asia it was major news. From what Sullivan and Conklin saw of American press coverage, it was virtually ignored. “Hey,” Conklin chuckled cynically. “What’d ya expect? There’s no photos of the self-immolation protests. No photos, no story, right? Didn’t happen!”
“Know what I think?” Sullivan countered. “I think we’re seeing a new American society—one so convinced of its own evil, it seeks only to reinforce that image. What effect is that gonna produce down the line? How many Democratic Kampucheas is this world gonna have?”
“Fuck it, man,” Conklin said.
“Fuck it is right,” Sullivan said. “There’s no chance, Conk. There’s no chance they’re alive.”
“Yes there is.”
“We haven’t been able to trace anybody, nobody, back to Neak Luong. Ya know what?”
“Come on, J. L. We’ve still helped a lot of people.”
“Fuck it. I’m sick of it. I’m gonna follow the American example. The American plan. That’s what the travel agents call it, eh?”
“What American plan?”
“I’m gonna quit.”
Met Kosal has been replaced by two ten-year-old boys; Met Nem by a nine-year-old girl. The boys carry AK-47 rifles which dwarf them. The girl is unarmed—even her eyes—a total emptiness. They do not have names. They are “Comrade Child.” Nothing more. Today, Vathana is under casual house arrest. She sits in a large wicker chair in the central room watching these beautiful, relatively well nourished children. They speak Khmer though she finds she cannot understand them—their language is so different. These are the new people of Met Sar, of Pol Pot, of Mao Zedong, of Ho Chi Minh, of Lenin and Marx—the New Communist Man and Woman. Nang is not home, has not been in the house for a week. For a week he has not brought Vathana to the cliff. Vathana does not know why. She finds herself praying for him, her little brother, praying, hoping he will perish peacefully. Comrade Child, girl, brings Vathana’s lunch on a tray. The food is sufficient—bland rice with some kind of meat dried to hard tack—but it is not good—prepared with little skill, little thought. Still it is more than the people get, much more. Vathana does not eat; does not move. Many children, very young, five to eight, come and go. The girl, Met Child, gives orders but Vathana cannot ascertain an orderliness. The moaning from the abyss comes and goes, too. For months it has been continuous, oscillating only in intensity. At the moment it is louder than ever before. The nightly burnings have been suspended because there is so little gasoline and what there is is being used at the front. The children are abuzz. There are visitors. There are rumors. “The yuons are coming.” Vathana doesn’t move. Half a dozen little boys are running, playing. One steals some food from her tray. He dives behind her chair. Others are shooting at him with their fingers. Another takes food from the tray. Then another. Vathana doesn’t move. She feels exposed, raw, as if she’d been skinned and all her nerve endings exposed. Even the wind currents from the moving children are painful. The food disappears. The little boys leave. The one from behind her chair slithers around to the front. Then he stands. He faces her, stares at her as if she is a stone object. He nudges her leg with his knee. Vathana watches him carefully, studies him. His eyes are bright, he is beautiful, more beautiful even than her own son, as beautiful as Samay when he was so small, almost as beautiful as Samnang. The little boy raises his hand, points his finger, cocks his thumb. “Bang! You’re dead!” He runs out.
Vathana feels vulnerable, still she cannot move. She is not afraid of death, not afraid of torture. Everyone is vulnerable to those—no one escapes either—there are many forms of torture. But...Her brain refuses to carry the thought, to let it grow, blossom. Other thoughts germinate...to save her brother’s soul...what did he mean, ‘I’ve met with them’?...to get him to stop the killing...to let them all flee....The ideas pull in so many directions that her core thoughts behind those large black eyes are unable to move, unable to decide on a thought to think, catatonic. Still the vulnerability to...to...not to be killed but to kill. Not to be tortured but to torture. If her own brother could become a mass executioner, why not she? Why not me? Why not you?
“Where is Little Rabbit?” Vathana can see a young man on the porch. He is Nang’s height, perhaps slightly shorter. He’s built powerfully like Nang, perhaps more powerfully. He wears a khaki tunic with a white shirt beneath, a symbol of his status. With him are a platoon of older yotheas—seventeen to twenty-two years old.
Comrade Child, girl, does not understand. “Rabbit Number Two?” the man says. “Night Rabbit! Met Nang!” Vathana is certain Comrade Child is playing dumb. Most of the children have disappeared. For one so young, Vathana thinks, she is very worthy. The rifles which usually stand in a central room rack are gone.
“Yes, we have here Met Nang. He is not here but he is here coming.”
“Tell him Eng has come to assist him.”
“Met Eng?” Met Child, girl, cracks an infinitesimal smile.
“Met Eng of Angkar Leou. Nang is my very long time friend.”
For many days Met Eng stays at the house of Nang. His platoons, with Met Soth as an attaché, set up bivouac beyond the yard. Nang returns. The men meet privately. Their planning is detailed, far-reaching. Vathana knows none of it but every day she sees changes. No longer is the food sufficient. And Nang no longer looks healthy. His face sags, the scar tissue on the right side wrinkles, folds like soft wax. The scar on the left deepens as if it were a tightening cord burying itself into his head. Each day he is different. Each night he locks her in the tiger cage and prattles quietly. “Now Eng is here,” he confides to Vathana, “how everything will be made right. He will not let me fail. All enemies will be utterly crushed.” The next night he whispers, “The Viet Namese are coming. They’ve ten thousand troops in the East, a hundred and twenty thousand at the border. Soon they’ll come. Eng will be disappeared. We shall lead them.” Then the next, “Tomorrow get rice. Hide it where we can get it fast.” Then, “If they conquer us, first we’ll be their subjects, then slaves in their colony, then a minority in our own land. They’ll kill every Kampuchean. Khmer will be no more.”
One moment he is happy; one moment serious, thoughtful, pondering alternatives; then furious, raging uncontrollably; then very businesslike, controlled, detached. The periods in any mood grow shorter. The time arrives.
Vathana stands at the edge of the abyss. The rains had tapered off in late October. Now they have ceased entirely. Beside her is Nang. He is crazy. Eng is in the tree house, Soth has taken over Site 169. She feels them watching, feels Eng’s empty eyes. Vathana glances down. The lip of the cliff hides the bloody tangled mass below but the rising wind is full of its agony and decay. “I’ve imprisoned every man, every woman, every child...” Nang’s voice is conspiratorial. He does not look down. He moves as if there were not a four-hundred-foot drop only inches from his feet. “...in their communes. Ha! No, not there. In...” He grabs Vathana’s arm, turns her, pulls her back away from the edge. “...in their own minds. Ha! They know nothing. Nothing exists but what I tell them, what I show them.” To both sides Eng’s yotheas have mothers with children. They are making the women play blindman’s buff with their own offspring. One woman shrieks, tells a boy to run, jumps before she can see a yothea impale the boy with a bayonet. A second woman plays the game, tries to soothe her two daughters telling them it’s just a game. Everything will be all right. Vathana is numb. At the moment she hates both these stupid women and the sickeningly naive children. Why not make them kill you? Why kill yourself? Yet as Nang turns her again she thinks she herself will leap and end his game. “For years they’ve known nothing of Kampuchea,” he says. “The outside world does not exist. Only me. Only what I tell them.”
From the cliff edge Vathana can see hundreds of square miles of Cambodian territory yet she cannot get a sense of the land. It rolls here, is lush there, is barren there, flat there. Somewhere, there must still be Khmer people but Vathana is not certain. She sees none other than those approaching the cliff in the line that disappears behind the escarpment to the east. The hot rising air is so foul her mind retches but she shows no emotion. Nang has switched topics. He is telling her about the creek bed beneath the canopy, about the small hidden temple, “there is an Apsaras on the east wall that has eyes like yours, follow her eyes, she looks to the cache. Now, one more step.”
Vathana closes her eyes. It is time. “Divine Buddha...” she whispers. She lifts her left foot, advances it over the edge.
“Ha!” Nang spins her, pulls, walks her back, “you must be more careful, you promised Chhuon you’d take our story to the world.” He laughs loudly. Yotheas to each side smirk, laugh with him, at him. I...he thinks, they see me, they think I play the game better than them. Again he turns Vathana. “you must listen, there is the creek, there are mines on the west bank but not the east.” They are thirty feet from the edge, walking slowly.
“Samnang.” Vathana lays a hand on his arm. She is trembling. “Let me go. I want to go to Papa!”
“ach!” The noise of disgust is very quiet, “you go to Chhuon, you are dead.”
“Isn’t that what...”
“Twenty-eight thousand in thirty days. That’s the latest report. I’m the best. Sar must take notice. You tell the world. Then Sar will know, too. No one knows. They know only what they’re told. Tell them, twenty-eight thousand in thirty days. Tell them no one is better than Nang. Yesterday I measured the fill, the drop is now less than three hundred feet. Can you survive that?”
“You can kill me. You can let me kill myself. Or you can let me go. Those are your choices. You make that choice for everyone. You make that choice, Kdeb.”
Again they are at the edge. Vathana has grasped Nang’s sleeve. “So many,” she whispers. “So many have died. There is Chhuon, Sok, Grandmother. Let’s go to Papa together.”
“Ha! Haha!” Nang snatches grips at both her shirt sleeves. His laugh is loud. “Ha! You are crazier than me! Ha!” He pulls her down with his right pincer, pushes up with his good hand. Vathana resists, yet he is very strong and she leans face first over the edge. Her knee buckles. He releases. She slides head first down the lip. He grabs an ankle. She reaches out, down, digs her fingers into the dry crumbling stone, pulls herself down. He sits, pulls back, digs his heels in. She flails her arms, twists her body, attempts to kick his hand with her free foot. Her skirt flaps up over her back.
Half a dozen cliff yotheas converge, laughing, staring. One grabs Nang’s shoulder and pulls. Then another assists. All are laughing. Nang lets her dangle, thrash. Three yotheas form a chain. One reaches out, grabs the waistband of her pants, pulls them back. “What an ass,” one yells. “Look at her hump the cliff,” another calls. “Hey, let’s hump her first.” “Yeah.” They drag Nang, he drags Vathana. He lifts her by the ankles, pulls her over his back. “Me first,” he shouts. “Me first.” He runs away from the cliff. The yotheas follow. He runs beyond the row of cells. They cannot go there. “Hey, bring her back,” they yell. He pays no heed.
Again Nang cages Vathana but now continuously, not just at night. “For safekeeping,” he insists. He is morbid. He has fallen into a chasm of guilt and depression so deep that the violent acts occurring in the East are not new PAVN blitzkrieg spearheads but the righteous punishment of God, the lightning and sword, of Vishnu striking through Viet Namese-aimed, Russian-made cannons, tanks and rockets. Radio Hanoi’s broadcasts call for a general uprising, plot the advance in words.
Eng is incensed. He wants to go to the front. The front is coming to him. Mimot, Snuol, Svay Rieng have fallen. The PAVN is driving up Highway 1 toward Neak Luong, up U-shaped Highway 7 toward the Chup Plantation on one leg and toward Kratie on the other, and down out of Ratanakiri along Highway 19 through Andaung Pech, past the ruins of Phum Sath Din toward Stung Treng. Radio Phnom Penh reports resistance everywhere, reports brave victories ever closer to the Mekong. From Viet Nam there is announcement of the new Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation. It is headed by Heng Samrin.
Everywhere there is the whisper, “the viet namese are coming. the viet namese are coming.” The whisper grows louder.
“Met Nang,” Eng calls in a loud voice. There is no answer. Vathana can hear the commotion, the movement of squads of yotheas in and about the house, but she sees nothing.’ Nang has covered her cage as one covers a birdcage at night.
“Met Nang.” Vathana recognizes the voice of Eng’s underling, Soth. “You are accused of heinous crimes against the people...” More commotion, scuffling, shots, then running and quiet. Suddenly, beyond, there are explosions.
Vathana does not feel sorrow though she is sad. There is but one heaven, she thinks. It is what Chhuon taught her when she was very little. One death for all bodies, one heaven for all souls. But only to have lived better, only to have died with peace in his heart. It is now very quiet. The house is empty, she thinks. They have gone. She reaches through the slats of the cage and lifts the plastic tarp. It is dusk. She is alone. She has never before attempted a break from the cage and she thinks of Nang’s words—I have imprisoned them in their own minds. She thinks it is disgusting yet she knows it is true. The latch is crude but strong. She cannot budge the pins. The cage is lashed together with vines and wires. She works on a joint. The wires are easy to untwist and unwrap but the vines have dried and are hard as wood. Methodically she picks at just one, at just the edge. She is able to break off a sliver. She works. She is frustrated by the resilience of the rattan. She quits. Holds her head. Pulls her hair. Then she attacks the vines again.
It is now dark. Vathana has broken two lashing joints. She thinks it will take five before she can separate the side from the top enough to force her head through. There is noise in the yard. She works frantically. There is noise in the house. She pulls the tarp down, freezes. She tries to stop breathing. Her chest aches. The noise stops. She is certain it—he?—who?—has not departed. She waits. Her head is hot. The air under the tarp is stale, the ambient odor from the abyss is caged with her. She hears a step, a creak of the floor. Then again all is silent. Still she doesn’t move. More noise—outside. Something light scampers into the room with her. There are shouts. Yotheas. They’ve surrounded the house. Then the tarp flicks up. A knife blade slits the joints Vathana had been working on. “come.” The voice is small. Vathana squeezes up, out to the waist, “quick.” It is little Comrade Child, girl. The girl pulls her to the floor. Then she lies atop Vathana and covers them both with the crumpled tarp. Yotheas are stomping into the house, flashlight beams cross the central room, flick into Nang’s room, into the cage.
“Damn it.” The voice is hard, angry. “She’s escaped. Go for the aunt. She’ll go there.” There is the noise of a squad rushing out.
Comrade Child, girl, waits only half a minute. Then she creeps from under the tarp, pulling Vathana with her. Quickly, quietly, she leads Vathana from the house, from the yard, out beyond the minefields to the trail to the cliff. She does not speak. Vathana follows, blind, dumb. Aunt, she thinks. Aunt Voen. Where is she? Comrade Child hustles on. The path is empty. At the cliff base the stink, the moaning air, the night gnats assault them. Still they stumble on. Above, Vathana senses the light show strung between the points of the horseshoe, but she does not look up. A shriek, a hundred shrieks fill the air. Thuds, thunks, moans, gasps. Vathana’s senses close down. They slip off the path toward the cliff, base. The falling, dying humans splat upon the dead and rotting so near they are sprayed with blood and fluids. Comrade Child descends into the creek. Her footing is sure. Vathana cannot see. She stumbles, falls, rises. Comrade Child stops. As Vathana reaches her the girl pulls her past, “you aren’t...don’t leave me.”
“booby trap.” The little girl removes the pin from a grenade and sets the trip wire. They move on. Three more times Comrade Child arms traps. In the ancient Hindu temple there is a faint light. All about are Nang’s children. Comrade Child, girl, directs Vathana to enter as she goes to her post. The stones are cold and damp against her feet. The breasts of the Apsarases and the tips of the lingas have all been chipped. In the pale light Vathana sees a man. He is dressed in bloody tattered rags taken from a corpse. He bows to her, his hands together in an awkward lei. “Have you eaten rice today!” The old idiom.
“Samnang!”
“I am Eng Samron of Stung Treng.”
“Samnang. I thought...Those clothes...How...”
“I am in the clothes of my people. Join my people. Nang is dead. When Eng sprang the trap, my children sprang theirs. Eng too is dead. And the most treacherous, Soth. You must change clothes. Then we will go.”
Slowly Vathana edges forward. Gently she lays her left hand on the drooping waxlike scar. She runs her hand up to his forehead, across, down his other scarred cheek, down his neck, across his chest to his arm and to his mutilated hand. “You could have been such a fine younger brother.”
“Quickly now,” Nang says. “We have very far to go. I will go out. Put these on.”
All night they travel west and south, deeper into Cambodia. At moments Vathana feels safe, free, then she feels very frightened. Much of the time they crawl through low, prepared tunnel trails through dense vegetation—trails like those made by a small rabbit. At dawn they hole up. At dusk they set off again. West farther, then north. Again they stop at dawn. They are hidden in a forested oasis of green amid a sea of ruined paddies. Quietly Nang points out minefields, ambush sites, sniper holes, death pits. He knows every inch of the landscape, every bone of the dead. “If I had been allowed to continue,” Nang says matter-of-factly, “Kampuchea would be a land without Kampucheans, eh!” Then he laughs. “Now...” He laughs again. It is very funny. “Eng Samron shall go to Stung Treng. Papa is there. He’s there with Uncle Cheam. I will go to school. He promised I could.”
“Samnang...” Vathana begins, but he interrupts.
“I had a friend from Prey Veng. He is Rin, Met Rin. He is very impressed with Nang of Kompong Thom. A Gray Vulture. Why do you think I wore his uniform all these years? So he will know. Now there, you see, there is Thailand. At dusk you will take my children there.”
“You’ll come too.”
“Me? No. I have a choice, eh? I am Eng Samron of the Khmer Viet Minh. I have valuable intelligence about the forces of Democratic Kampuchea. How can I go there?”